Meet the team: Sam Cartwright, Species Recovery Specialist

Welcome to our Meet the team series, where we introduce the people behind The Lifescape Project, giving you an insight into who we are, how we work, and why we’re passionate about Lifescape’s mission.

In this post we meet Sam Cartwright, Species Recovery Specialist.

What do you do at Lifescape?

Most of my role is investigating whether a lynx reintroduction to Britain is practically feasible, meaning I‘m spending lots of time looking into the detail to understand what would need to happen to safely release them into the wild here. This includes everything from understanding genetics, to the design of transport boxes and holding enclosures, risk assessments, and how to set up comprehensive surveillance schemes. It’s a busy job and never ever dull! I also work on the white-tailed eagle feasibility project.

What did you do before?

Lots of things! I am an ecologist by training and a member of CIEEM. My PhD was on the Mauritius kestrel, which by the 1970s was the rarest bird in the world with only four remaining in the wild. It was restored to a relatively healthy population through captive breeding and provision of monkey-proof nesting boxes. I spent a lot of time in Mauritius climbing trees and abseiling cliffs to access their nests, getting bitten by mosquitoes and stung by scorpions, bees, and mouche-jaune in the process!

I then spent a few years in academia, and one of my postdoctoral projects focused on the role of badgers in bovine TB. We looked at thousands of hours of tracking data and never found any direct contact between badgers and cattle. But we did find that both animals occupied the same places on fields sometimes only a few hours apart, which could be risky if either animal is infected.

I then spent a few years at a local Wildlife Trust, initially fighting development plans that would damage nature-rich places and wildlife, and later on overseeing some of the Trust’s landscape scale projects in the countryside and setting up the Trust’s land advisory service. I later left the trust to help set up a food sustainability charity before coming to Lifescape.

What’s your favourite thing about working at Lifescape?

The job itself is brilliant but it’s the team that makes it so special. The Lifescape crew are an exceptionally talented and experienced bunch, but they are also some of the most kind and dedicated people I’ve ever worked with.

What do you like to do outside of work?

My partner and I are restoring the stone barn we live in which occupies a lot of my time! But when I’m not covered in dust and spiderwebs I’m out on the fells running, hiking, climbing, and swimming. I run ultramarathons: the longest so far has been 105 hilly miles.

Tell us about your favourite encounter with nature

Every day I get to be out in nature is precious. But a standout moment for me was fledging a rescued white-tailed tropicbird by hand in Mauritius. We’d rehabilitated him as a chick at home, and when it became clear he was ready to go we took him to the beach. He was sat on my hand for a moment then just took off, straight out to sea. He knew exactly what he was doing. We watched him through binoculars until we couldn’t see even see a speck on the horizon anymore. Tropicbirds spend the first few years of their lives out at sea, only returning to land when they are ready to breed.

If you could be any animal, which would you be and why?

I’ve been asked this before and I’m going to plagiarise the answer a colleague at the time gave because it was brilliant. I would be a human, because too often we fail to appreciate that we are just animals, and we are a part of nature, we are not separate from it.