Dear Ecolog-L members,
More than a year ago, we asked for your experience with vandalised and
stolen research equipment, which was left unattended in the field. We
obtained more than 60 reports, showing a large range of incidents (from
none to >50% within a few months) and a variety of applied protection
measures. Thank you everyone again for your helpful replies to our survey!
To test for a simple way to potentially reduce interactions with
left-alone equipment, we conducted a study in four public parks in
Munich. We found that attaching a personal, friendly and informative
label to unattended scientific equipment reduced vandalism by more than
40 %, compared to neutral and threatening labels.
If you'd like to know more, our results appeared online and with open
access today in Methods in Ecology and Evolution: "Personal messages
reduce vandalism and theft of unattended scientific equipment" by
B.-Markus Clarin, Eleftherios Bitzilekis, Björn M. Siemers and Holger R.
Goerlitz.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.12132/full
Thanks and all the best,
Holger Goerlitz and Markus Clarin
--
Dr. Holger R. Goerlitz
Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Sensory Ecology Group
Eberhard-Gwinner-Strasse
82319 Seewiesen
Germany
phone: +49 (0)8157 932-372
fax: +49 (0)8157 932-344
[email protected]
http://www.orn.mpg.de/129793/ERC_interBat
