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Richard Yarnell

Richard Yarnell

Associate Professor

School of Animal Rural & Environmental Sciences

Staff Group(s)
Environment

Role

Dr Yarnell is an Associate Professor in Ecology, with research interests in field of ecology and conservation, with a particular focus on carnivores and small mammals. He is also the Director of Doctoral Programmes in the School of Animal Rural and Environmental Sciences and teaches the undergraduate African Field Course Module to Mankwe Wildlife Reserve. Richard also supervises undergraduate and postgraduate research projects in mammal conservation.

Follow him on Bluesky: @richardyarnell.bsky.social

Career overview

Richard undertook a degree in General Zoology (BSc Hons) at the University of Aberdeen, before working as a research assistant on the University of Cambridge’s meerkat project. He then completed a NERC funded MSc scholarship in Ecology at the University of Wales in Bangor, before taking up a research post at the Central Science Laboratory. He undertook a PhD at the University of Brighton on the impact of game ranch management on small mammal population dynamics, before becoming the CEO of the Badger Trust. Richard joined NTU in 2007 as a Lecturer, where he undertook a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE) and became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He became an Associate Professor in ecology in 2017 has previously taken on a number of Leadership roles including Acting Associate Dean for Research, REF Unit of Assessment Co-ordinator (2021) and Postgraduate Courses and International manager.

Research areas

Dr Yarnell is an Internationally renowned researcher in the field in animal conservation, covering many aspects of vertebrate and population ecology.

View Dr Yarnell’s research outputs via ORCiD.

Current PhD students and project titles include:

  • Rachael Leeman: Leopards and citizen science.
  • Sarah Curtis: Ecology of brown hyaena in Namibia.
  • Emily Harper: The impact of parasitic load on hedgehog fitness in a rural and urban wild population.
  • Kelly Hitchcock: Hedgehog Citizen Science.
  • Paulina Pawlikowska: National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme.
  • Matthew Jones: Dynamics and connectivity of spatially structured populations. Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya: Andean bears spatial ecology and conservation.

Past PhD students:

  • Hongli Yu: Conservation and population genetics of British hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus).
  • Bethany Smith: The ecological consequences of livestock guarding dogs.
  • Lauren Moore: Road impacts for the West European hedgehog: Understanding mechanisms and testing solutions.
  • Shashank Balakrishna: The reproductive ecology of the barn owl (Tyto alba) in agricultural landscapes
  • Anthony Seveque Trophic Cascades: the role of apex predators in Europe’s modern human- dominated landscapes.
  • Jessica Schaus-Calderon Using the Random Encounter Model (REM) to estimate rural and urban hedgehog population size.
  • Katie Lee Untangling the roles of prey availability, habitat quality and predation as predictors of hedgehog abundance - in collaboration with PTES
  • Robert Davis Leopard ecology and conservation in Malawi – In collaboration with Carnivore Research Malawi
  • Esther Kettel A comparison of urban and rural behaviours in the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus)
  • Oluseun Akinsorotan Impacts of illegal human activities on mammal occupancy in Old Oyo National Park, Nigeria
  • Louis Phipps: Movement patterns and foraging ecology of threatened vultures in southern Africa.
  • Tim Stratton: Investigating the use of personality research to improve reintroduction success.
  • Louisa Richmond-Coggan Brown hyaena conservation in South Africa
  • Holly Root-Gutteridge Bioacoustics of wolf howls

Opportunities to carry out postgraduate research towards an MPhil / PhD in the School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences exist, and further information may be obtained from the NTU Doctoral School.

External activity

  • Member of NERC Peer Review College
  • Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Mammal Society
  • Member of the RSPB’s Hedgehog release strategy working group for the Uist’s Native Wildlife project
  • Associate Editor at African Journal of Ecology

Publications

Recent publications:

HITCHCOCK, K., TOLLINGTON, S., KHWAJA, H., WILLIAMS, L.J., HAMILL, K. and YARNELL, R.W., 2025. Food over features: supplementary feeding has the strongest influence on hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) occupancy in urban gardens. Urban Ecosystems, 28 (6): 225. ISSN 1083-8155

BENJAMIN, E.S., BATES, A., DAVIS, R., SÉVÊQUE, A., WILD, J., CLUTTERBUCK, B. and YARNELL, R.W., 2025. Artificial supplementary food influences hedgehog occupancy and activity patterns more than predator presence or natural food availability. Wildlife Biology. ISSN 0909-6396

YU, H., BARLOW, A., DAVIS, R.S., GENTLE, L.K., UZAL, A., BAKER, P.J. and YARNELL, R.W., 2025. Habitat and predator heterogeneity influence density of a declining mammal. Oikos: e11706. ISSN 0030-1299

LEEMAN, R.S., DAVIS, R.S., UZAL, A., NEUMEYER, H., GARBETT, R.A., TWINING, J.P. and YARNELL, R.W., 2025. Tourist sightings improve the precision of camera trap‐derived density estimates using spatial capture‐recapture models. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. ISSN 2056-3485

SMITH, B.R., WHITEHOUSE‐TEDD, K., YARNELL, R.W., MARGINEAN, M., POPA, R., MORLEY, A., TREWBY, I. and UZAL, A., 2025. Direct interactions between livestock guarding dogs and wildlife in a transhumance grazing system. Conservation Science and Practice: e70120. ISSN 2578-4854

YU, H., MOORE, L.J., BARLOW, A., GENTLE, L.K., DAWSON, D.A., HORSBURGH, G.J., KNOWLES, L., BAKER, P.J., BATES, A., HICKS, H., PETROVAN, S., PERKINS, S. and YARNELL, R.W., 2025. Unexpected landscape-scale contemporary gene flow and fine-scale genetic diversity in rural hedgehogs. Conservation Genetics. ISSN 1566-0621

LEE, K.A., UZAL, A., GENTLE, L.K., BAKER, P.J., DELAHAY, R.J., SÉVÊQUE, A., DAVIS, R.S. and YARNELL, R.W., 2025. Does differential habitat selection facilitate coexistence between badgers and hedgehogs? Ecology and Evolution, 15 (1): e70744. ISSN 2045-7758

WILKINSON, C.E., DHEER, A., ZETT, T., TORRENTS‐TICÓ, M., YARNELL, R.W., BAR ZIV, E., BHANDARI, S., JACOBSON, A. and DLONIAK, S.M., 2023. Review of the global research on Hyaenidae and implications for conservation and management. Mammal Review. ISSN 0305-1838

See all of Richard Yarnell's publications...

Press expertise

  • Conservation
  • Wildlife
  • Hedgehogs
  • Hyaena
  • Badgers
  • Wildlife management

Course(s) I teach on