I work with Indigenous communities in all the practical and strategic processes that support their territorial autonomy and self-determined developmental agendas. In a beautifully complex world, that can mean anything from technical GIS support, monitoring biodiversity in territory, analyzing invasions and threats to territory, strategizing and obtaining the necessary data to fill gaps to support legal cases against threats and support informed decision-making. I am an interdisciplinary academic-activist working with Indigenous nationalities and representative organisations in pursuit and actualization of their autonomy and collectively self-determined vision. I have worked on the intersection between international law, national judicial systems, international environmental commitments, extractive industries and the plural visions of Indigenous Peoples and other historically minoritized groups. My focus has been on human rights-based approaches to conservation and what they imply in current law, traditional/local ecological knowledge, and Indigenous leadership in navigating an encroaching world (community-based monitoring and mapping of territory (for biodiversity, threats, culture, etc.)). I have worked across South America and both South and Southeast Asia and have now returned to the Amazonian region as the monitoring field coordinator for Amazon Frontlines. For my work things feel free to skim my LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/tomatitoperdido

Kate joined the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP), based at Fauna & Flora International (FFI), in February 2020. She has worked in a variety of science communication roles, and has a BSc in Zoology and Psychology, an MSc in Animal Behaviour, and a PhD in Zoology. Kate has had a lifelong interest in ecological research and wildlife conservation, and has studied a variety of species in the field, including Atlantic puffins in the UK, Horsfield’s hawk cuckoos in Japan, and Aegean wall lizards in Greece.

I have over 30 years of experience of species conservation and protected area management; human–wildlife conflict mitigation; countering the illegal wildlife trade; conservation-related research; biodiversity surveys; monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL); impact evaluation; and wildlife policy formulation, including the writing and implementation of action plans. Much of my time since 1988 has been spent in Asia and, from 2007, Asia and Africa. I spent the 1990s living and working in protected areas in Java, advising on their management with a particular focus on ungulates, wild dogs, and leopards. From 1998, I focused on elephants, particularly on the development of reliable monitoring methods, human–elephant conflict mitigation, and, since 2004, the ivory trade and the illegal killing of elephants. I worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for 18 years, working to conserve elephants in partnership with other NGOs, communities, and governments, and ultimately coordinating WCS’s elephant conservation work in Asia and Africa. In February 2018, I co-founded the NGO, Asian Arks, and served as its CEO until September 2020 with the aim of replicating and extending models of directly managing protected areas under long-term agreements with governments and communities, which the NGO African Parks and others have shown to be successful. From early 2018, I also worked as an independent consultant, partly to support the work of Asian Arks, which as a start-up was unable to pay for full-time staff. Consultancy projects completed include advising the Government of Mozambique on CITES policy, development of a threat monitoring protocol for protected areas and biodiversity offset sites in the Lao PDR, and a human–elephant conflict mitigation strategy for the Government of Gabon. Since December 2021, I have been employed by ZSL to lead the development of a robust conservation planning process to help ZSL’s teams design effective and adaptive long-term conservation strategies and deliver conservation impact.

Hello! I'm currently working at ZSL on a few projects (post Living Planet Report production) with the Living Planet Index team and the WWF Netherlands offices. Prior to this I was working within elephant conservation and managing Illegal Wildlife Trade projects within Angola. My conservation career has been quite diverse as I have very broad interests and I learned in this field you really have to make the most of any opportunity! I started as a field ecologist working on wildlife disease management on the Badger vaccination programme. After that I worked on assessing extinction risks of invertebrate groups for IUCN Red List projects. Love inverts! Especially butterflies! That lead me into working with historical specimens, the fun of taxonomy, digitisation and curatorial research projects. I've also worked with plants just to round it off - assessing extinction risks of Papua New Guinea Tree Ferns. I guess I have a "no taxa is discriminated against" kinda attitude! :) Looking forward to meeting some of you, learning about your interests and joining this lovely community!

I'm a field herpetologist and during the past half century have, along with similar-minded colleagues, set up several NGOs in India including Madras Snake Park, Centre for Herpetology/Madras Crocodile Bank, Irula Snake-catchers Cooperative Society, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Environmental Team, Irula Tribal Women's Welfare Society and Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. My current focus is a Centre for Herpetology/Madras Crocodile Bank project entitled "Snake Conservation and Snakebite Mitigation".

Sanjana Paul is the executive director and co-founder of The Earth Hacks Foundation. She holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and physics, and is currently working on engineering problems at NASA. Previously, she worked as an NSF REU participant in extreme ultraviolet engineering in the Kapteyn-Murnane Lab in JILA at the University of Colorado Boulder, and as a Conservation Innovation Fellow at Conservation X Labs. When not shooting lasers around or coding solutions to climate issues, she likes exploring the outdoors and baking delicious treats.

Passionate lover of nature