Collaborators

Paul Armsworth, Ph.D.
Lecturer in Biodiversity and Conservation, University of Sheffield, U.K.

Armsworth’s research focuses on the interface of ecology and economics and specifically on the design of investments in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. He also studies spatial population and community dynamics in both terrestrial and marine systems. Before moving to Sheffield, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford. He is a theoretical ecologist and holds two Ph.D.s, one in mathematics and one in biology.

Kai M.A. Chan, Ph.D.
Research Chair, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia

Chan is a transdisciplinary scholar of biodiversity conservation and associated human needs and responsibilities. A frequent contributor to popular media, he also collaborates with The Nature Conservancy, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and other conservation organizations with the aim of integrating science into conservation planning and action. He has won awards from the Heinz Foundation, the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and many others. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University after receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Claire Kremen
Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley
Associate Conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society

Kremen's primary interest is to use biological, social, and economic data to develop conservation plans that benefit both the environment and people, and her work has included a wide array of topics, from the economics and ecology of ecosystem services, to reserve design and ecological monitoring. She was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her contributions to ecology, agriculture, and biodiversity. Her work reaches from theory to practice and includes hands-on conservation action, including design and establishment of one of Madagascar's largest national parks. Her current research focuses on restoring pollination services within farming landscapes, using both predictive modeling and field studies. She was a member of the recent National Academy of Sciences study on the status of pollinators in North America. In Madagascar, she works to establish a national web-based conservation-planning tool by accumulating data on species occurrences, developing predictive models of species distributions, conducting conservation analyses, and making data and analyses accessible via the Internet.

Eric Lonsdorf, Ph.D.
Landscape Ecologist, Lincoln Park Zoo

Lonsdorf has specialized in the study of fragmented prairie plant communities, conservation of genetic diversity in foundation species, conservation of chimpanzee populations in Tanzania, and management of jaguars in Argentina. Beyond his academic research, he has also advised the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service on how to incorporate adaptive decision-making into the management of their National Wildlife Refuge system. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota's Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior department and his B.A. from Carleton College.

Bruce McKenney
Senior Economic Advisor, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Finance and Planning Group

McKenney works on advancing market-based approaches to conservation, managing the Conservancy's work on biodiversity offsets and collaborates with project teams to develop ecosystem service-based strategies for conservation. He has 15 years of experience applying policy and economic analysis to improve the environment and human well-being, including five years working in Cambodia. Prior to joining the Conservancy in 2006, McKenney contributed to projects and studies for the World Bank, World Commission on Dams, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, World Wildlife Fund, Moore Foundation, and National Parks Conservation Association. He holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University, an Honors Degree in African Studies from the University of Cape Town, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Political Science from Brown University.

Belinda Morris
Senior Economic Advisor, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Finance and Planning Group

Morris works with TNC field and project teams to develop market-based approaches to conservation, including ecosystem services strategies and biodiversity offsets. Prior to joining the Conservancy, she consulted on economic and policy aspects of biodiversity conservation for a variety of international conservation and development organizations, including the World Bank, World Wildlife Fund, UK Department for International Development, European Union, and United National Environment Programme. Morris also ran a small non-profit organization that focused on economic approaches to conservation, for which she received a Rainer Arnold Fellowship from the Mulago Foundation. She received a M.S. in Environmental Management and a M.S. in Environmental and Resource Economics from the University of London and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina.

Robin Naidoo, Ph.D.
Staff Scientist, World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US) Conservation Science Program

Naidoo’s interests focus on integrating economic costs and benefits into ecoregion planning and conservation. He has mapped the economic costs and ecosystem values of conservation at both the landscape scale, including sites in Uganda and Paraguay, and at the global scale. Naidoo received his Ph.D from the University of Alberta with the co-supervision of professors in the Biology and Rural Economy departments. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals in both economics and ecology.

Sue White, Ph.D.
Professor of Integrated Catchment Management and Head of Integrated Environmental Systems Institute, Cranfield University, UK

White is a hydrologist with 30 years of international experience on river basin monitoring and modelling, with an emphasis on evaluating the impacts of catchment management and external change (e.g. climate) on hydrological process. She is currently the hydrology lead for the Leverhulme funded “Valuing the Arc: linking science with stakeholders to sustain natural capital” which is focussed on the Eastern Arc Mountains demonstration site of the Natural Capital Project; White is also a hydrology advisor to the Natural Capital Project. White heads a cross-disciplinary research institute, whose staff work on land resources monitoring, integrated land and water management, ecosystem function and ecological restoration.