Jeanetta has more than 25 years’ experience in conservation and wildlife research and management. Her area of expertise is conserving cross-border elephant species. She holds a PhD from the School of Life Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She is a senior research scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute in South Africa, where she advises the Scientific Authority of the Government of South Africa. She has helped develop national policies and participated in a number of CITES meetings. Jeanetta is also a member of the Okapi and Giraffe Specialist Group, a research fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a Kinship Conservation Fellow and vice-president of the South African Wildlife Management Association. She is also a member of several national advisory committees dealing with large mammals.
Anna is an ecologist with over 20 years' experience teaching and conducting research in Tanzania, and holds a PhD from the University of Virginia. As an ecologist and conservationist, Anna produces science that can help further human-wildlife coexistence. Anna’s primary interests are human-wildlife interactions in changing landscapes and habitats. Her research has included land-use impacts on biodiversity, predictors of human-wildlife conflict, land-cover change around protected areas, wildlife movement, habitat use and population connectivity, human demography, and zoonotic diseases. She loves teaching and has been involved in experiential education for almost 20 years. She is committed to expanding STEM education to groups that have previously been under-represented in these fields. She is an adjunct professor in Life Sciences at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology in Arusha, Tanzania.
Lucy has worked in elephant and rhino conservation for over 40 years. She has studied the rhino horn and ivory trade since the early 1980s, with an MA in Zoology and a PhD in Social Sciences. While working for the African Elephant and Rhino Specialist Group in the 1980s, she compiled data on the status of African rhinos and elephants. She has conducted field research in Africa and Asia and has published her findings widely. She was the first editor of Pachyderm, and remains on the editorial board. Lucy is an associate researcher with the Oxford Wildlife Trade Research Group. She is a member of the African and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups.
Ben was appointed co-Chair of the AfESG in 2018. He is the Director of Wyss Academy for Nature, East Africa Hub where he works with partners to develop relationships between nature and people. Ben is a conservation leader and ecologist with over 25 years of experience in conserving the black rhino and the African elephant. He has worked with governments, NGOs, and inter-governmental organizations to bridge the gap between conservation and development. He holds a doctorate in conservation and a presidential award for distinguished service to the Kenyan nation.
Loki has been examining the conflict between wildlife and people for over 30 years in both Africa and Asia. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, that focused on the ecology of crop-raiding elephants and subsequent research has focused on the use of community-based conflict mitigation techniques to deter elephants from agricultural areas. Loki ran the non-profit Elephant Pepper Development Trust, which worked with rural farmers across southern Africa to develop protocols to enable them to protect themselves and their crops against elephants, while providing markets for chillies from which these farmers could derive an income. In 2019, he developed The Okavango Craft Brewery in Maun, Botswana, the world’s first ‘elephant aware‘ brewery that makes beer from millet grown by farmers who have relocated their fields from elephant corridors. Loki is the director of Connected Conservation which assists communities, NGOs, and governments to develop practical mitigation solutions for wildlife.
Rob was appointed co-Chair of the AfESG in 2018. He was appointed at the University of KwaZulu-Natal South Africa in 1996. Since 2014 he has been a Professor in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, UK. Rob focuses on applied research that can be translated into practical solutions and builds capacity through training graduate students and running interactive workshops with practitioners in government and industry. His research work includes conservation of large mammals, land-use planning for environmental sustainability, and the environmental contribution to sustainable development goals. Rob was appointed as the Oppenheimer Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2022.
Kathleen has worked on wildlife and habitat issues for nearly three decades as a research scientist, federal ecologist and non-profit programme director. She earned her PhD in Biology from the University of Washington, USA, where she holds an affiliate professorship. Kathleen specializes in terrestrial and marine large mammal conservation with research that bridges wildlife science, protection, policy and emerging technology. She has been a member of the AfESG since 2017 and has published work on African savanna and forest elephants, including fieldwork in Tanzania, surveys in Gabon and Red List assessments on both species.
Duan is the Chair of Environmental Science at Northern Arizona University, USA. He is a conservation scientist with over 20 years of global experience in community-based conservation, sustainable tourism development, wildlife trade, human-wildlife coexistence, and the management of conservation conflict. Duan is also a member of the World Commission for Protected Areas and the Sustainable Use and Livelihood’s Specialist Group. Duan’s career has also focused on promoting the understanding of how stakeholders’ decisions and actions lead to outcomes in conservation. Duan also played a leading role in a community and rights-based approach to the illegal wildlife trade. He has raised over US$1 million in research and conservation grants and is the founder of Resilient Conservation.
John first came to the Democratic Republic of Congo on a Watson Fellowship to study the ecology of the pygmy livelihood in 1973 – 1976. He studied the ecology of duikers, principal bushmeat species for his PhD in the early 1980s. He worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) from 1985 to 2007 before joining the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba Rivers project full time. His main responsibilities before retirement were coordinating animal monitoring and patrols throughout the park and in the buffer zone. He trains and mentors staff and students and produces maps both to guide fieldwork and illustrate results.