Meet the Task Force

David Mallon

Special Advisor to the Species Survival Commission

Dmallon7[at]gmail.com

David is a Special Advisor to the Species Survival Commission, a member of the IUCN Red List Scientific Committee, and the Green List Task Force and was a member of the IUCN SSC Species Conservation Planning Subcommittee (2010-2016).

He has been Co-Chair of the Antelope Specialist Group since 2004 and is a member of the Caprinae, Cat, Equid, and Sustainable Use Specialist Groups.

He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Natural Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Linnean Society , and an Honorary Conservation Fellow, Zoological Society of London.

Meet the Task Force

Catherine Machalaba

Principal Scientist for Health and Policy, EcoHealth Alliance

Catherine is Principal Scientist for Health and Policy at EcoHealth Alliance, where she works closely with intergovernmental and governmental partners on research, policy, and operations focused on the intersection between human, animal and environmental health (“One Health”). 

A key focus of her work is researching and addressing the shared drivers of biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and disease to find multi-sectoral and cost-effective solutions. Catherine is a member of the One Health High-Level Expert Panel advising the FAO, UNEP, WHO and WOAH, and also served as program officer for the IUCN SSC Wildlife Health Specialist Group for 10 years. She has a PhD in Environmental and Planetary Health Sciences.  

Meet the Task Force

Caroline Lees

Program Officer, IUCN SSC Conservation Planning Specialist Group

Caroline works for the IUCN SSC Conservation Planning Specialist Group (CPSG) as a conservation planning facilitator and wildlife population modeller. For over thirty years, CPSG has supported diverse groups of stakeholders to plan the conservation of threatened species. In 2016, at the request of the SSC Chair, CPSG took up the challenge of facilitating an increase in the SSC’s involvement in planning, with a focus on responding to the needs of governments as they work to conserve and protect their biodiversity.

Through the taskforce Caroline will help to maintain a connection between CPSG’s species planning advice, tool development and capacity building work, and the higher-level strategic advice being developed by the IUCN SSC to inform the CBD’s post-2020 agenda for global species conservation.

Meet the Task Force

Bráulio Ferreria de Souza Dias

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias is Associate Professor at the University of Brasilia’s Department of Ecology. He has coordinated research on biogeography, fire ecology, insect ecology and conservation of the Brazilian Cerrado Biome, the largest savanna in the Americas and the richest savanna in the world.

Braulio has been strongly involved with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since its negotiations. He has been the Brazilian National Focal Point for both the Subsidiary Body for Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) and the Clearing-House Mechanism (CHM)of the CBD.

Meet the Task Force

Alison Hutchinson

Global Biodiversity Framework Task Force Programme Officer

alison.hutchinson[at]newcastle.ac.uk

Alison is a Research Associate at Newcastle University, her research focuses on harms and crimes impacting wildlife and the environment, with a particular interest in restorative and ecological justice.

Recent projects have investigated the overlap between legal and illegal wildlife trade and corporate environmental crimes (see recent projects). 

She holds a PhD in green criminology from Northumbria University (UK) and has conducted research into wildlife trade and crime with a focus on fisheries crime, inter/national environmental and wildlife law, and wildlife forensics. 

Meet the Task Force

Philip McGowan

Global Biodiversity Framework Task Force Chair | Professor of Conservation Science and Policy at Newcastle University

Philip joined Newcastle University (UK) in 2012 after 20 years working on threatened Galliformes (pheasants, grouse, cracids and relatives) in Asia, Africa and South America, and especially India, Nepal, China, Djibouti and Thailand.

He served as Co-chair of the IUCN SSC Policy Subcommittee in 2015-16 and has experience of intergovernmental conventions and processes. He now seeks to identify and undertake research that will be of most use in informing and shaping global policy and is concerned with ensuring research is communicated appropriatly to enhance the status of species.