About

Jonathan is a global authority on the status and trends of threatened species. He is Conservation Programmes Director at the Zoological Society of London and works on a large number of projects which focus on monitoring the status of rare and threatened species.

Jonathan’s extensive fieldwork experience includes research and monitoring of western lowland gorillas in Gabon, Central Africa; developing ecotourism sites in Central Africa; monitoring rare endemic birds in the Gulf of Guinea; and behavioural studies of desert baboons in Namibia.

Carly is the EDGE Programme Manager. She oversees all EDGE research, conservation and capacity building initiatives, from developing new priority lists through to initiating targeted conservation projects for those species in most urgent need of conservation attention.
Carly has travelled extensively throughout South and Central America, Australasia and Indonesia. Her fieldwork experience includes the ecology and conservation of orangutans in Borneo, and socio-economic surveys of fishermen in China.

Craig is the EDGE Conservation Biologist and plays a key role in the development and implementation of field research and conservation initiatives focusing on poorly-known EDGE species. His role is split between consolidating and further developing ZSL’s capacity-building EDGE Fellows programme, and co-ordinating larger-scale field projects.

Craig’s past work has involved coastal waterways in Costa Rica, coral reefs in Tanzania, island wildlife of Malaysia, endemic species of the Philippines and community forest conservation in Papua New Guinea. He currently co-ordinates the ZSL red slender loris conservation project in Sri Lanka.

Sam is an expert on past and present mammal extinctions. His research addresses historical and prehistoric human impacts on global ecosystems and the magnitude of human-driven extinctions over time, and how to develop conservation strategies for today’s endangered mammal species.

Sam is already heavily involved with active conservation projects for top EDGE species. He has been one of the key co-ordinators for the recovery programme of the Critically Endangered Yangtze River dolphin and for the Hispaniolan solenodon.

Ben’s research has provided valuable insights into extinction processes and conservation decision-making. He is currently developing species-based biodiversity indicators to enable conservationists and policy-makers to determine whether we can achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss.

Helen is the EDGE Amphibians Co-ordinator. She developed the amphibian EDGE list, researched the ecological traits and conservation needs for the top 100 EDGE amphibians, and is currently responsible for implementing conservation actions for species which were identified as focal amphibians.

Catherine is the EDGE Coral Reefs Co-ordinator. She is responsible for developing and implementing capacity building and conservation measures for the focal EDGE coral species and their habitat, as well as the fundraising and communications for the programme.

Catherine’s background in coral reef conservation includes ecological assessments and outreach work in the Philippines and Tobago, and coral bleaching research in Bermuda.

Matthew is the project manager of the EDGE Sharks programme. He is responsible for co-ordinating project development, which includes fund-raising, liaising with partners developing the shark phylogeny, increasing the profile of the project and identifying conservation initiatives that could be applied to potential EDGE Shark focal species.
He has worked on the research and conservation of aquatic animals, particularly fish, for over 15 years and is also involved in other projects including the conservation of the Thames Estuary, the creation of the Chagos Marine Protected Area and freshwater fisheries management in Nepal. Read more.

James is a freelance web-developer. He is responsible for web programming, database design, and other related activities on the EDGE project. Having programmed computers in several different languages from the age of eight, James studied Physics at Imperial College, London. He worked as a software developer for ICL and then Deutsche Bank for nearly five years, before deciding to go freelance. In addition to his development work, James is a professional Thai massage teacher and practitioner and an occasional life-model and piano teacher.

Alasdair is an EDGE Technical Advisor. His background in Multimedia and Internet Technology enabled him to create the EDGE website, supported by Carly Waterman and volunteers. He now works as part of the EDGE website team and is also Programme Director of The Great Primate Handshake: an innovative primate conservation awareness tour of Africa.

David, originally from Sweden, lives in Ireland with his wife and works for an IT company. Passionate about nature since a young age his interest in conservation was particularly stirred during a recent year-long round-the-world trip, when he among other things made friends with a baby Giant Anteater in an Amazonian animal orphanage and on Borneo saw EDGE Species #97 the Orangutan, as well as the endless rows of palm-oil plantations that are now pushing it towards extinction. David created the EDGE Google Earth maps, allowing you to view EDGE species anywhere on the planet.

Daniela helps promote awareness of EDGE species through Blogging and Social Media. She is al so involved in the efforts to revamp our website and develop our fundraising opportunities.

 She has years of experience in conservation research and hopes to continue to be involved in setting conservation priorities.

 

Camellia assists EDGE Coral Reefs by researching and writing species accounts but has also contributed to the latest EDGE Mammals Top 100 list. Camellia is also responsible for the social media presence of EDGE through blogging, Twitter and Facebook.

Camellia developed a passion for coral when learning to dive on the Great Barrier Reef and has since participated in a reef fish survey in Tobago. Past contributions to conservation include invasive plant removal in the rainforest of Australia and turtle conservation in Cyprus.

Nick's background is in evolutionary biology and phylogenetic analysis. These skills are essential for calculating Evolutionary Distinctiveness scores. Nick is currently exploring how abundance varies among populations of butterflies and mammals in response to different forms of land-use. His research uses patterns in biodiversity to understand extinction risk and predict how threatened animals can survive into the future.

Kate’s research is focused on the evolution of mammal biodiversity, understanding the processes that drive past and present patterns to predict the future. Kate works developing and analyzing global datasets of mammal distributions, life histories and phylogenies. In fact, she was part of the team that put together the supertree of all mammals, from which the ED part of the EDGE score is calculated.

Arne, a Canadian evolutionary biologist, is the author of over 40 papers and book chapters on the evolutionary aspects of biodiversity. Alongside recent work on the effects of El Niño on butterfly communities in Borneo, he has had a long-standing interest in the shape of the Tree of Life. It is this characteristic shape (a tree with many lonely species) that is captured in measures of Evolutionary Distinctiveness and so EDGE. Arne was trained at McGill University and at Oxford, and worked at the University of British Columbia and the Zoological Museum of Amsterdam.

Dave first studied evolutionary distinct species for his Master’s thesis project and now is researching how EDGE scores can be applied to the world’s birds. He also plans to investigate geographical patterns of distinctness with the hope of finding out which regions or habitats need to be prioritized.