David Curnick

Postdoctoral Researcher, ZSL

David is leading the field-work for our coral reef monitoring project in Fiji. At the Zoological Society of London, his research seeks to understand the spatial and temporal behaviour patterns of sharks and tuna, and how they interact with both marine reserves and fisheries. Other than the BHP in Fiji, David's work is based around the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) Marine Protected Area. David is a committee member of Reef Conservation UK and has previously worked on coral reef projects in the Red Sea, Caribbean and Indo-Pacific region.

Jason Lynch

PhD Student, UCL

Jason studied both his BSc and MSc in environmental science at Queen Mary University of London with an intertidal ecology and hydrology focus. Now part of the London NERC DTP, his PhD aims to explore socio-ecological fishing pressure dynamics in the Great Sea Reef, Fiji. He will use an interdisciplinary approach, employing underwater video technology to monitor the scale and behavioural traits of coral reef fish, which will be interwoven with social science methodologies to build a robust fishing pressure gradient. This collaborative project aims to contribute towards informing the sustainable management practices of locally managed marine protected areas in Fiji.

Sarab Sethi

PhD Student, ICL

Sarab is a PhD student working on developing hardware and automated analysis methods for soundscape monitoring at our Borneo field site. He is interested in investigating how large scale ecosystem dynamics can be detected through fully automated, unsupervised methods. Previously, Sarab studied Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, specialising in computing and signal processing.

Liam Thomas

Graduate Research Assistant, UCL

Liam is working on the Nepal component of the project, where he conducts field work in and around Bardia National Park. Previously, Liam completed an MRes in Bioscience from Cardiff University, where he studied sex biased gene flow in brown bears using genetics markers as well as developing a pipeline for the identification of sex chromosomes in brown and polar bears.

Santosh Rayamahji

Professor, Tribhuvan University

Santosh works in the Institute of Forestry and is partnering with us on the Nepal component of the project.

Peggy Bevan

PhD Student, UCL

Peggy will be using the camera trap and audio data from the Nepal site to investigate species responses to human disturbance by measuring changes to behaviour, abundance and more general soundscape. She hope my work can contribute to understanding how animals use the buffer zone around the national park and to quantifying thresholds of disturbance for the wildlife community there.

Emily Madsen

Graduate Research Assistant, UCL

Emily is working on the Kenya component of the project. Based in the Maasai Mara, Emily uses camera traps and acoustic monitors to monitor how wildlife responds to different levels of grazing across five different sites. Emily is also interested in multi-species interactions and carnivore distributions in sub-saharan Africa. Previously, Emily completed her MSc in Wild Animal Biology from the Royal Veterinary College and Zoological Society of London, where she assessed the distribution of wildlife outside of the protected areas in the Maasai Mara working with the Mara Cheetah Project. 

Dr. Paul Webala

Senior Lecturer, Maasai Mara University

Paul is a National Geographic Explorer and a senior lecturer a MMU. He is a regional expert on small mammals, especially bats, with extensive fieldwork experience. Paul uses bats as a focal group to understand and interrogate processes that drive rarity and abundance of mammals in natural, and human-dominated, environments. He is primarily a community ecologist, although his research addresses a variety of important questions for improving bat conservation in Africa. His research also spans several sub-fields of biology including behavioural, ecological and systematic/ taxonomic questions. He is a member of the Bat Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission and co-chair of Bat Conservation Africa. He is also a research associate with National Museums of Kenya, Kenya Wildlife Service, Bat Conservation International and the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH, Chicago, IL., USA).

Holly Pringle

PhD Student, UCL

Holly working on camera trap and acoustic data from Kenya, with a focus on freshwater biodiversity and the use of riparian habitats in response to anthropogenic pressure. She completed her Masters at UCL in 2017, where she investigated the effects of livestock presence and habitat type on deer activity in the Brazilian Cerrado. She has recently returned from South Africa where she worked as a research assistant on a camera trapping project studying leopards.