I am a conservation scientist focused on understanding the impacts of landscape-scale disturbance on tropical biodiversity. I’m particularly interested in how we can combine acoustic technologies and machine learning to quantitatively assess these impacts, as well as assess the effectiveness of conservation initiatives. I'm currently a postdoc researcher at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, UW-Madison using soundscapes to assess the value of forest certification for wildlife in logged forests in Gabon. Previously, I completed my PhD at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology focused on bats in Borneo. 

I am a PhD candidate at the Durrell Institute of Conseration Ecology (DICE), hosted at the University of Kent. My research focuses on how land use change influences human well-being in central Indonesia. My background is in tropical forestry and development. Other research interests include the application of food systems thinking in forestry issues, biodiversity and food security at the forest-water interface, and the management of multifunctional landscapes across the tropics. I am a keen advocate of strengthening international and inclusive collaborations in forest and conservation research. I have a deep love for baking (please share with me your recipes!), basketball and peanut butter 🤩

Is your organisation's technology decision-making as structured as it needs to be? Conservation organisations face real pressure to adopt technology, often without a clear process for assessing whether it fits their context, capacity, and conservation goals. The free Conservation Technology Decision Quiz takes five minutes. It scores your approach across three areas: Decision Clarity, Fit and Feasibility, and Delivery and Performance. Results include practical recommendations matched to your score, so you can see where your decision process is strong and what to address first. Start here: Technology Decision Quiz I work with conservation organisations and funders on structured technology decision-making, the process that determines whether adoption actually works. Twenty-five years in conservation across the Global South. Technology-agnostic, no vendor affiliations. If your team is navigating a technology decision, evaluating a pilot, or funding organisations that are, I'd welcome a conversation. BACKGROUND Dr. Louisa Richmond-Coggan. My career spans field-based ecology, international NGO and policy work, academic leadership, and conservation technology decision-making. Field career: large carnivore ecology and human-wildlife coexistence research across Eastern and Southern Africa, including as Head of Ecology at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. I led Namibia's National Leopard Census, a multi-stakeholder project whose results fed into national and international policy. I built the Carnivore Tracker app, the first of its kind in Namibia. Institutional career: BirdLife International, UNEP-WCMC, TRAFFIC International, Earthwatch. Academic Dean at the School of Wildlife Conservation at the African Leadership University. Technology and innovation work with IUCN Tech4Nature, including leading three Innovation Challenge Workshops and contributing to the strategic guidance framework on conservation technology adoption. The Navigating Web 3.0 Guide: A Tool for Conservation came out of that work. It is a decision-support tool that starts with your conservation goals and operational realities, not the technology. 34 guided questions assess which emerging technologies are worth exploring across four areas: data collection and management, resource allocation and financial management, collaboration and communication, and monitoring and evaluation. Now integrated into the IUCN GSAP SKILLS platform. This guide is where the decision-support work started, and it remains the clearest entry point into conservation technology decision-making for teams new to this field. Research at the International Conservation Technology Conference, Lima in 2026 confirmed what I had been building toward: the gap in conservation technology is not the tools. It is the structured process for deciding whether, which, and how technology fits an organisation's context. PhD, Nottingham Trent University. MSc Conservation Biology, Durrell Institute. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. IUCN WCPA Task Force on Human-Wildlife Coexistence. Member of the Nature Tech Collective and Top Tier Impact.

My research has focussed on applying psychological insights into human behaviour to help tackle some of conservation’s most pressing problems. I have studied the design and evaluation of behaviour change interventions, drawing upon work across multiple disciplines and methodologies. Currently I am exploring experimental video games as a research and behaviour change tool.