Category: Task Force members

Xiaoli is an associate professor at the State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, IBCAS. She has a particular interest in demonstrating the use of CBD-recognized indicators (e.g., WPI) to measure countries’ conservation progress.

Her current research focuses on conservation planning and effectiveness of protected areas. She received her PhD. in Zoology from Peking University in 2009 and had experience working as a visiting scientist at Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia. She has served as an associate editor for Biodiversity and Conservation since 2011.

Wendy is the Deputy Leader of the Wildlife Practice at WWF-International, working primarily on strategic design, implementation support and evaluation of WWF’s wildlife conservation portfolio.

Wendy has worked at the intersection between science and policy for most of her career, leading targeted advocacy initiatives in many contexts, both environmental (e.g. CITES, CMS, IWC) and beyond (e.g. UN Crime Fora, UN Security Council).

Stuart is a Chief Scientist at BirdLife International, where he leads a team developing BirdLife’s scientific datasets, research and priority-setting to underpin BirdLife Partnership’s Conservation Programmes.

He has been involved in the development of biodiversity indicators and the assessment of progress towards global biodiversity taargets for over 20 years and is a member of the CBD’s Ad-Hoc Technical Expert Group on indicators for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Sean has played a leading role in the IUCN Conservation Genetic Specialist Group since 2017, and also leads the Genetic Composition Working Group in GEO BON.  He co-founded and leads the Coalition for Conservation Genetics. Since 2019 he has engaged with CBD issues on genetic diversity and species recovery.  His research focuses on developing science-based advice for ex situ conservation, understanding the genetics and ecology of threatened species, and  bringing knowledge on adaptive capacity of populations to national and global policy.

He has helped develop and deploy several novel methods for assessing and reporting on genetic diversity, including a CBD Headline Indicator.  He regularly works with organizations like the Center for Plant Conservation, BGCI, US Forest Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service. He also has interests in seed dispersal, hybridization, and population bottlenecks. You can read more about his group at hobanlab.com.

Rahul has over 30 years of experience in wildlife research and conservation. After obtaining his Ph.D. on the ecology of the Cheer Pheasant, he ran the South Asia Field Office of the World Pheasant Association for 13 years from Delhi before moving to the Wildlife Trust of India in 2005 where he now oversees conservation with special interest in species recovery and protected areas.

He has been involved with assessing the organisations contribution to meeting the Biodiversity targets, also leading into the National report for IUCN on the matter.

Paul is the Secretary General of the BGCI, which coordinates and monitors the progress of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, the first target-oriented work programme of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

With a career spanning 30 years working in conservation and botanic gardens, Paul has trained as a plant ecologist and is a specialist in the plants and vegetation of southern Africa. He chairs Forestry England’s Arboreta Advisory Committee and is a Trustee of the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

Paul is the recipient of the New England Wildflower Society’s Medal for Services to International Plant Conservation and the David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration.

Neil is the Head of the Science Programme at UNEP-WCMC and a Professor at the Centre for Marcoecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen.

He has a long standing interest in the biogeography and conservation of African biodiversity. This has broadened in recent years to issues of the effectiveness and equity of protected areas and other conservation interventions, with regard to biological and human outcomes. He also has, and continues to, manage various forms of conservation projects in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe over the past 25 years.

Louise is an NUAcT Research Fellow at Newcastle University where her research focuses on reconciling species and ecosystem conservation needs to provide decision makers with the scientific understanding required to halt biodiversity loss. 

Together with research partners from the IUCN, she developed the  Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric. STAR quantifies the potential contribution of threat abatement and habitat restoration activities to reduce global species extinction risk and can support the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework by allowing countries and other non-state actors, such as NGOs and businesses, to set and measure progress towards science-based targets for species conservation.

Louise’s background is in macro-ecological research, with a particular focus on the impacts of climate change and land use on species distributions. She completed her PhD at the University of York and has experience working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala.