I'm an interdisciplinary environmental natural and social scientist and ecosystems and biodiversity conservation and restoration specialist with more than 20 years practical experience in Africa,  Europe, South America and Oceania. My academic background is BSc Hons Aquatic Sciences (Marine & Freshwater Fisheries Conservation and Management); MSc Agroforestry, Silviculture and Forest Management) and PhD in Environmental Sustainability (Wetlands Ecosystems Conservation and Restoration Policies and Sustainable Management). I've working knowledge in academia,  non governmental organisations and government departments in the UK and Africa. I've skills in partnership development,  funding management and stakeholders engagement. 

Iyanuoluwa Moyinoluwa Shittu is a passionate conservation educationist dedicated to teaching conservation education and getting more people to join in biodiversity conservation. With over two years of work experience in field conservation, Iyanuoluwa is known for her community services and outreach to interior communities. She was popularly known as the “yam girl” after being gifted 80 tubers of yam for crowdfunding and constructing a borehole for a community where she served, Born and raised in Nigeria, Iyanuoluwa developed a fascination for the Sustainable Development Goals during her days at the university. This early curiosity blossomed into a lifelong commitment to biodiversity conservation and raising the next generation of African conservationists (more women this time). She studied for her Masters in Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge. Outside of work, Iyanuoluwa enjoys surfing the internet and playing percussion musical instruments, finding inspiration in music and the beauty of nature. Iyanuoluwa is deeply committed to raising awareness for conserving our remaining forests and the wildlife inhabiting them, striving to make a meaningful impact in Nigeria and Africa.

I am a trained communication professional with 12+ years of progressive experience in orchestrating strategic communication plans and designing programmes to promote sustainable development & pro-conservation behaviour amongst businesses, government employees, educators, and youth. My area of expertise includes marketing communications, content development, programme design, development and execution, and event management. I am interested in catalyzing change through the implementation of innovative projects and programmes that address socio-environmental challenges and are embedded in equity and justice.

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.

Steve joined Wildlife Health Australia in April 2022 as the Program Manager - One Health Surveillance and Wildlife Collaborating Centre for Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Steve graduated from Massey University in New Zealand in ecology and veterinary science. He has worked as a wildlife clinician in several zoos, wildlife rehabilitation centres and conservation projects in Australia, Thailand, Cameroon and UK, and academia in the UK. Steve is a European specialist in Zoo Health Management and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK. He has coordinated international, multidisciplinary wildlife health networks in Africa and South-East Asia. As a systems thinker in the One Health space, Steve aims to mitigate adverse environmental health impacts from human activity at the human-wildlife interface in the Indo-Pacific region through interdisciplinary research, capacity development and effective networked risk management. Steve’s research interests focus on wildlife infectious diseases, especially zoonoses, disease risk analysis and mental health of wildlife health practitioners.

Originally working as a set designer and model builder in the theatre and film industry, I undertook professional retraining in ecology, wildlife first aid & rehab as well as in wildlife conservation. In addition to that, I volunteered at two wildlife rescue centres on Vancouver Island and at a Portuguese wolf sanctuary. Educational highlights, so far, have been the workshops in Strategy Development and Project Management for WC by WildTeam UK and my time at the rescue centres. I had the most rewarding moments while caring for wild animal patients. Species I've been handling so far: river otter, great horned owl, fawn, a variety of songbirds, hummingbird, a variety of water fowl, great blue heron, crow, raven.