2nd EFN Global Conference

June 30 - July 1, 2018 : Kuching, Malaysia

Bridging the Gap Between Local and Global Conservation

WWF’s Russell E. Train Education for Nature Program (EFN) is hosting its second global conference for alumni in Kuching, Malaysia from June 30 – July 1, 2018. The event is taking place between two significant international conferences (IMCC and ATBC) and will provide a unique space for conservationists from around the world to share ideas, foster collaboration, and build understanding of important conservation issues.

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SPEAKERS

CONFERENCE SESSION LEADS & SPEAKERS

Nelly Kadagi, Kenya

Nelly is a fisheries stock assessment scientist and educator with over seven years of experience working with diverse fishing sectors (commercial, artisanal, and recreational) and other stakeholders along the Kenya coast and the Indian Ocean region. The focus of her work is in improving the quality of fisheries data collection, analysis, and reporting particularly on large pelagic fish species such as billfish and Tuna. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Florida where her dissertation work is on understanding the implications of fishing on billfish in the Western Indian Ocean region.

Anand Roopsind, Guyana

Anand is a forester by training with a strong statistical background. His current work focuses on utilizing remotely sensed imagery to understand previous changes in forest ecosystems in order to forecast their condition under a changing climate and larger human footprint. Part of his work includes capacity building of undergraduate and graduate students in his home country of Guyana by bringing established scientists from northern academic and research institutions to teach and mentor students.

Estra, Indonesia

Estradivari has over 12 years of work and research experience in the fields of marine ecology, marine conservation, and management for various international and national organizations. She joined WWF Indonesia in 2013 as a marine conservation science coordinator. She works with national and international scientists, governments, and civil societies throughout Indonesia to implement various regional marine monitoring and research techniques to support adaptive management. Estra holds a Bachelor of Science in Marine Science from Bogor Agricultural University as well as a Master of Science in Environment and Resource Management from Vrije University.

Ha Thang Long, Vietnam

Long has been working in the conservation field since 1999 and began his career at the Primate Rescue Center in Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam. In 2009, he received his PhD in Animal Ecology from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. While conducting field research in Kon Ka Kinh National Park with fellow conservationists, he was inspired to establish a biodiversity conservation center in central Vietnam and soon after GreenViet was formed. With the help of local communities, Long hopes he can preserve Vietnam’s forests and wildlife for generations to come.

Nina Wambiji, Kenya

Nina is a senior scientist at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI). She holds a PhD in Fish Physiology from the University of the Ryukyus-Okinawa-Japan. She is also the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA) country coordinator for Kenya. She has extensive experience working with diverse stakeholders in marine research particularly on near-shore fish species, large pelagics, and marine mammals across the Western Indian Ocean. Some of her work includes overseeing a regional project (BY-Catch Assessment and Mitigation in Western Indian Ocean Fisheries (BYCAM)) in five countries funded by WIOMSA.

Edy Setyawan, Indonesia

Edy is currently working with manta rays in the Bird’s Head Seascape in West Papua, Indonesia. He is interested specifically in applied behavioral ecology, particularly on the movement and conservation of manta ray populations. His research primarily focuses on the population size, home range, habitat use, and behavioral movement of reef manta rays. In addition, he also works on the fine-scale movement pattern of reef manta rays using satellite telemetry in several locations in Indonesia.

Suyadi, Indonesia

Suyadi was born in the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (BBSNP), Indonesia. He began his conservation journey when he was 15 years old, when he helped the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) establish a research station. In 1999, WCS supported him to study at a senior high school and to pursue a Bachelor of Science at Pakuan University, Indonesia. He completed his Master of Science at Bogor Agricultural University supported by EFN. He works for the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), where he successfully established local community-based organizations around BBSNP to support wildlife and forest conservation. He is currently a PhD candidate of Environmental Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

CONFERNCE PARTICIPANTS

CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

Aires Mbanze, Mozambique

Aires was born in north Mozambique and holds a graduate degree in Forestry Engineering from Lúrio University. He is currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Economics in the University Nova of Lisbon and a research assistant at Lúrio University in Mozambique. He was granted the Fundação Para Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT) Scholarship in 2015 and received a Train Fellowship in 2016. His research interests include evaluation of ecosystem services and fire behaviour and management.

Allison Besch, USA

Allison is the Director of Executive Education Programs and the Career and Professional Development Center Team Lead at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, USA. She designs and implements non-degree professional development and continuing education programs for a wide range of environmental professionals. She oversees a career center that manages internship and employment strategy and professional development for environmental master’s students at Duke University. She has over 20 years of experience in science communication and educational program design, including work at National Geographic magazine, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and the North Carolina Maritime Museums. Allison holds a Bachelor of Arts in geology/environmental studies from Colgate University and a Master of Environmental Management degree from Duke University.

Archier Chung Fung Chen, Malaysia

Achier Chung is a Lead Marine Biologist/Advisor for Reef Guardian Sdn Bhd that manages the Sugud Islands Marine Conservation Area (SIMCA), at Sandakan Sabah, Malaysia. Achier has been stationed on Lankayan Island for the past 14 years, managing and running a marine conservation program with a team of 10 to 15 workers. In 2015, she earned her doctorate in Marine Science/fisheries from the Borneo Marine Research Institute at University Malaysia Sabah, focusing her studies on the ecosystem management of the coral trout. For the past decade, Achier has logged over 2,000 dives for research, exploration and documentation of changes of population and abundance of reef fishes and corals over years of reef protections in SIMCA. She is actively engaging the local enforcement authorities, NGOs and private industries into the action of reducing illegal fishing within the marine protected areas.

Azefor Nangah Asah, Cameroon

Azefor is an environmental researcher from Cameroon. In 2010, she attended the Pan African Institute for Development West Africa where she obtained a Higher Technical Diploma in Development Studies. Her research interests during the program primarily emphasized conservation, environment, and development, and she was able to complete field research on the coastal beaches of Limbe and all around the South West Region of Africa. In 2011, Azefor was the key facilitator in the Njinikom Council Strategic Planning, Resource Mobilization and Programming Workshop and joined several research teams which completed Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Studies.

Flavia Montano Centellas, Bolivia

Flavia is a Bolivian biologist currently pursuing a PhD in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. She was born and raised in the mountains of Bolivia, and as such, she is deeply committed to their study and conservation. Her research interests are mostly related to community ecology, with an emphasis on animal-plant interactions and community assembly in tropical ecosystems. She uses both bats and birds as study organisms in her research. Her interests also include the conservation of the endangered tropical Andes and the consequences of disturbances on Andean communities at different scales.

Harith Farooq, Mozambique

Harith is a Mozambican biologist pursuing a PhD from the Universidade de Aveiro in Portugal. Before starting his PhD in 2016, he worked in Mozambique for six years as a lecturer, researcher, and manager, where his research mostly focused on the inventorying of amphibians and reptiles across the country. His current research is focused on the biodiversity value of the inselberg forests in northern Mozambique. Harith’s main interests are species distribution and conservation, and he expects that his PhD research will help conservation in Mozambique by screening the country for important areas of genetic storage.

Helen Fox, USA

Helen is Senior Director of the “Changing Planet” Grants Program at the National Geographic Society, supporting innovative leaders in conservation, research, education, storytelling, and technology who seek a deeper understanding of our planet’s ecosystems as well as practical solutions for conserving large natural spaces on land and sea. She has over 20 years’ experience working at the boundary of science and conservation, including work on links between marine protected area (MPA) management and governance, ecological impacts, sustainable fishing, and human well-being, with expertise in Indonesia and the Coral Triangle. She was previously the Director of Marine Science at WWF-US, Senior Director of Research and Monitoring at Rare Science, and Principal of Fox Conservation, LLC. She was the PI of a working group on “Solving the Mystery of MPA Performance” at the Social-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), which resulted in a published paper in Nature. Helen received her PhD in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley in 2002, investigating coral reef recovery and rehabilitation from blast fishing. She has received numerous grants and awards, authored over 30 scientific publications, logged over 1,000 dives, and once lived underwater for 10 days.

Henni Ohee, Indonesia

Henni is a conservationist from Indonesia. She received a master’s degree in conservation biology from the University of Indonesia and later obtained her PhD from Georg-August University of Göttingen. She is currently a lecturer in the Biology Department at Cenderawasih University in Jayapura Papua, Indonesia. Her main roles are lecturing students, researching, and serving the community. She has been working on species conservation for the past 20 years, with an emphasis on freshwater rainbowfish in Papua. For the last 10 years, her work has focused on fish ecology and conservation in Lake Sentani, one of the priority lakes in Indonesia.

Januarie Kulis, Malaysia

Januarie is a park warden of Lambir Hills National Park in Malaysia. She works with Sarawak Forestry Corporation to promote ecological sustainability throughout Lambir Hills National Park and its surroundings. This project promotes the importance and extent of the national park in providing local ecological services to surrounding communities under the economic and social context of global climate change, which, in turn, impacts the dynamic biological function of the park itself.

Michela Figueira, Brazil

Michela received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Federal University of Pará, in Santarem, Brazil in 2000. She then spent three years working as a research assistant on a project investigating the carbon balance in disturbed and undisturbed tropical forests. In 2004, thanks to EFN support, she started her graduate studies in the southeast of Brazil, and was awarded her master’s degree in Ecology from University of São Paulo -USP in 2006. She started her PhD in Science at the University of São Paulo in collaboration of the WHRC (Woods Hole Research Center) and her thesis focused on the impacts of soybean expansion in the Amazon and its implications to nitrogen cycle. She is currently working as a professor in the Natural Science Program at the Federal University of Western Para (UFOPA), where she teaches ecology and environmental education courses, leads research projects, and advises students at the Biology program.

Myatthu Kyaw, Myanmar

Myatthu grew up in Yangon, Myanmar and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Forestry from the University of Forestry, Yezin, Nay Pyi Taw in 2014. He then worked as a project associate for E Guard Environmental Services Company for about two years. He is currently a master’s student of the Environmental Engineering and Management Program at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. After graduation, he plans to pursue a career in environmentally-related fields.

Nana, Indonesia

Nana is a conservationist who graduated with a Bachelor of Science and Master’s in Biology from the Andalas University in Indonesia. She has recently continued her studies by pursuing a PhD in Conservation of Tropical Biodiversity at the Institute Pertanian Bogor. She first worked as a research assistance at the herbarium of Andalas University, then continued as the Curator of Lower Plants at Laboratory Biota Sumatra (LBS) of Andalas University, and joined Universitas Muhammadiyah Sumatera Barat on 2014. She has been interested in studying Nepenthes since 2001 and mostly conducted research on the taxonomy and ecology of Sumatran Nepenthes. Her goal is to continue to educate people to enhance their participation on Nepenthes conservation through student outreach and communication of local wisdom.

Nyro Tum, Cambodia

Tum is a fishery and natural resource management expert with almost 20 years of experience in the field. He works with local communities and stakeholders to build their capacity and promote participation in managing natural resources, particularly fisheries. He trained and educated over 100,000 people on related subjects, facilitated the re-planting of more than 50,000 flooded trees, and released millions of fish. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Fisheries Management from the Prek Leap National Colleague of Agriculture, Cambodia and a Master of Science in Freshwater Aquatic Management from the Rural University of Agriculture.

Pamela Kamya, Papua New Guinea

Pamela is a climate change scientist from Papua New Guinea. She completed a PhD in Marine Science at the Southern Cross University in Australia and was a Train Fellowship recipient in 2014. Pamela's research studied the impact of climate change on tropical marine invertebrates with a particular focus on the Crown of Thorns Starfish, which is responsible for damage on major reef systems such as the Great Barrier Reef. Pamela has published three papers in high-ranking journals on marine ecology, biology and global ocean change, including the Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.

Ratana, Cambodia

Ratana is a Cambodian conservationist working in the Provincial Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries. He received a master’s degree in Conservation Ecology from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand. Since 2009, he has been working on several wildlife studies, including camera-trap studies of leopard density, line-transect distance sampling of tiger prey, and utilization of waterholes by globally-threatened species in the dry forest of the Eastern Plains Landscape of Cambodia. He is interested in doing wildlife research on deciduous dipterocarp forest of Cambodia.

Robecca Jumin, Malaysia

Robecca is one of the frontrunners in the creation of Tun Mustapha Park, the largest marine protected area in Malaysia. During her Train fellowship, Robecca obtained her PhD in Conservation Science from the Borneo Marine Research Institute at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, where her research focused on the use of the ecosystem-based management approach in developing national parks to maintain healthy interactions between humans and the environment. Robecca is currently the head of the Marine Program at WWF-Malaysia, where she continues her work with national park development and marine conservation.

Sandeep Shrestha, Nepal

Sandeep is an assistant professor of the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at Kathmandu University, Nepal. He is pursuing his PhD at Kathmandu University in collaboration with University of Rhode Island. He was awarded a Train Fellowship in 2016. His PhD research studies the status, distribution, and population monitoring of the Chinese pangolin and Indian pangolin in Nepal. His goal is to establish a wildlife genetics and ecology laboratory in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at Kathmandu University, and he is committed to conducting research in conservation science throughout his lifetime.

Sandro Von Matter, Brazil

Born at a small family farm surrounded by the Brazilian Atlantic Forest in the state of São Paulo, Sandro has always been deeply fascinated by nature. Now, with the support of EFN, Sandro is investigating mutualistic interactions between animals and plants in the tropical forest and the contribution of citizen science towards international biodiversity monitoring for his master’s degree in Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development at Escola Superior de Conservação Ambiental e Sustentabilidade (ESCAS) in Brazil. His research will focus on searching for evolutionary and ecological patterns, understanding how ecosystems evolve, rebuilding ecological functionalities, and how citizen scientists and CitSci platforms can help scientists in the challenge of biodiversity mapping and conservation.

Seraphine Ntumba, DRC

Seraphine is a forest conservationist from the DRC. When she attended the RECOFTC course on Mainstreaming Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) in forest governance and climate change in Thailand, she learned how to incorporate FPIC into forestry projects without infringing upon the rights of indigenous people. For the past two years, Seraphine has been working in forestry management and, specifically, within Community Forestry, which includes wildlife in DRC.

EFN STAFF

Alex Batka, Program Officer

As a program officer, Alex primarily focuses on communications and grant management. She is part of WWF’s Russell E. Train Education for Nature Program (EFN), which provides financial support to conservation leaders in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to receive advanced degrees and trainings. As the grant manager for EFN Professional Development Grants specifically, Alex enjoys working with individuals to attend conservation workshops and conferences throughout the world.
Along with her grant management work, Alex serves as the communications specialist for the EFN team. In this role, her primary responsibility is creating content that highlights the importance of EFN grantees and their conservation research. She also oversees the development and organization of the EFN annual report.
Alex began her career in publishing, and now loves being able to use her communication skillset to help bring attention to the amazing conservation work taking place around the globe.

Andrea Santy, Director

Andrea Santy joined WWF in 2001 and has more than 20 years of experience in international education and exchange, capacity building, and cross cultural communications. As Director of EFN, she works to ensure that conservationists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America gain the skills and knowledge they need to manage their own natural resources. In 2005, Andrea was based at WWF Peru where she launched a highly effective protected area management capacity building program in the Andes-Amazon. The program ran through 2010 and contributed to training over 1,600 protected area managers, trainers, and park rangers.

Shelly Jackson, Program Associate

Shelly joined WWF in 2014 after graduating from Brigham Young University with a degree in political science and nonprofit management. As a Certified Nonprofit Professional, Shelly brings a unique perspective to the Russell E. Train Education for Nature Program. In her role as program associate, she oversees the grant process for all the EFN grants. She also manages the alumni program, including the alumni grants which support past EFN grantees to further develop their career by attending short courses, workshops, and conferences. Recently, Shelly led the development of the first, and now second global conference for EFN alumni. She hopes to continue to meet EFN alumni all over the globe and help facilitate a stronger network of global south conservationists.

Stephanie Eisenman, Sr. Program Officer

Stephanie joined WWF in 2005 and currently serves as a Senior Program Officer for the Russell E. Train Education for Nature Program. Her work focuses on grant management, budgeting, and program development with the goal of investing in education and training opportunities for deserving conservationists from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Specifically, Stephanie’s work with women from the Congo Basin has been a great success in providing underserved conservationists the opportunity to enhance their knowledge to improve themselves and their communities.
As a longtime member of EFN, Stephanie has helped grow the program from 500 alumni to more than 2,500 worldwide. She developed and currently manages the faculty fellowship program to support professors from Africa, Asia, and Latin America with the goal of improving university-level education in conservation.
Prior to joining WWF, Stephanie worked in Santiago, Chile teaching English to professionals in the corporate sector. Once she returned to DC in 2005, she found her place at WWF combining a passion for education with improving conservation efforts around the world.