Simon Pooley, FLS

I am an interdisciplinary researcher and conservationist specialising in human-wildlife interactions.

My current interests are focused on coexistence with wildlife, and I am working with colleagues in the IUCN Crocodile Specialist Group on guidance on living safely with crocodilians worldwide. I am a member of the IUCN Human Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group, and the IUCN Crocodile Specialist Group. I lead working groups for both specialist groups.

I work on crocodilians in particular, notably in southern Africa and India. I contribute to the attack website CrocAttack and my booklet and posters on preventing attacks are used in southern Africa (and downloadable from Researchgate). Croc Digest, my bibliography of human-croc interactions literature is published biannually, the 6th edition coming out in May 2026.

A key strand of my work focuses on the historical and cultural dimensions of conservation research, policy and practice. My recent book Discovering the Okapi: Western Science, Indigenous Knowledge and the Search for a Rainforest Enigma (Johns Hopkins University Press 2025; Wits University Press 2026) explores these dimensions of the okapi, emblematic of the complicated histories of Western natural history making and conservation in Africa.

I am also working with the Zoological Society of London on a hidden histories project, which includes restoring the forgotten contributions of non-Westerners to London Zoo and the work of the Institute of Zoology.

My research interests include wildfire and invasive species, and my monograph Burning Table Mountain: an environmental history of the Cape Peninsula (Palgrave 2014; UCT Press 2015) was well reviewed in humanities, social and natural sciences journals.

Career summary: after graduating with a D.Phil in Environmental History (University of Oxford) I was awarded Junior Research Fellowships at St Antony's College Oxford, and Imperial College London where I was based in Prof. Dame E.J. Milner-Gulland's Conservation Science centre.

On completion of my JRF I was hired to co-direct and lecture on the Imperial College Conservation Science MSc, before taking up my current lectureship in July 2016. I am an Honorary Researcher at the School of Life Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and Visiting Researcher at the Zoological Society of London. I became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in April 2026.