IWT Challenge Fund Advisory Group

Introduction

The Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Challenge Fund Advisory Group is one of the Biodiversity Challenge Funds Advisory Groups, and further information for these groups can be found on the Resources for Advisory Group Members page.

The IWT Advisory Group consists of a range of experts from our government, academia, law enforcement and the private sector advising Defra on the development of the initiative, reviewing applications and making technical recommendations.

Membership

Chair

John E. Scanlon

John is a leader in the fields of environment, nature and sustainable development, with a unique range of experience gained across multiple continents, disciplines and organisations. He is a longstanding and passionate advocate for the environment, and has served in senior positions in the private sector, with government, international organisations, the UN, and not-for-profit organisations. John currently works for the Elephant Protection Initiative Foundation.

Members with IWT knowledge or experience 

Amy Hinsley

Amy is a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and her work focusses on understanding how and why the wildlife trade changes in response to different factors. She has a particular interest in understanding the behaviour of trade actors like consumers, to inform evidence-based efforts to improve sustainability of wildlife supply chains. She has a PhD on the online trade in orchids and now co-chairs the IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group, but has worked on a diverse array of species, including saiga antelope, bears and medicinal plants.

Carly Cowell

Carly has been working in biodiversity conservation for over 25 years with experience in many countries around the world. As a botanist and horticulturalist her focus has been on plant species. As an ecologist, she's worked with both plant and animal species, particularly on policy, CITES and matters related to species survival due to unsustainable trade. Carly currently works at Botanic Gardens Conservation International.

Christian Plowman

Christian has worked in complex intelligence-led investigations for almost 30 years. For the last 8 years, Christian has worked extensively across Africa in creating and managing multi-jurisdictional counter-wildlife trafficking projects with a specific focus on professional standards, integrity, ethics and transparency. He was responsible for the implementation and leadership of the only functional, transparent, NGO-led intelligence gathering teams in Central Africa. He is a regular lecturer at Portsmouth University on transnational wildlife crime, and has co-authored several papers on the intricacies and obstacles of the illegal wildlife trade.

Justin Gosling

Justin is a law enforcement and criminal justice specialist drawing upon three decades of progressive experience. A former British police detective, Justin has worked globally delivering projects for leading non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations and has directly supported national law enforcement agencies through the design and delivery of capacity building programmes in over 20 countries. Justin is currrently working for the Environmental Investigation Agency, is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and is a member of the Network of Experts of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

Kumar Paudel

Kumar is a conservation scholar-practitioner from Nepal, and currently works for Greenhood Nepal. He works to control IWT on the supply side - curbing poaching, enhancing enforcement capacity, and making the local community and policymakers aware of the need to tackle wildlife crime. He also uses creative mediums like traditional folk songs, storybooks, poems, and animations to simplify the social cost of nature crime and the importance of biodiversity conservation.

Mary Rice

Mary is the Executive Director of the Environmental Investigation Agency in the UK which investigates and exposes a wide range of environmental crime and abuse. With close to three decades working in the environmental sector, she has extensive knowledge of the illegal international trade in wildlife and the key actors and stakeholders involved in both tackling and perpetrating the crime.

Naomi Doak

Naomi has over 20 years’ experience working in wildlife conservation including global work with The Royal Foundation, regional and national level work with a number of NGOs covering Asia and Africa including Viet Nam, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Thailand, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Seychelles. She developed and led pioneering work with the United for Wildlife Transport and Financial Taskforce, bringing together one of the largest private sector collaborations to counter wildlife trafficking. She has experience working along the entire supply chain for illegal wildlife products from source to destination and developed and led the first social research survey into consumption of rhino horn in Viet Nam and elephant ivory in Thailand, which informed development of comprehensive behaviour change approaches to reduce demand for these products. Naomi currently works for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Paul Harrison

Paul provides high-level technical and strategic advice to environmental programmes and strategies in public and private spheres, drawing on 24 years of international experience of conservation programming and finance within the corporate sector, International NGOs, UN agencies and at community levels. Paul previously led development and early implementation of the Global Environmental Facility’s (GEF) Global Wildlife Programme for UNDP whilst concurrently managing a portfolio of GEF projects across 25 countries in Africa and Asia. During this time, he steered key strategic, programmatic and policy responses on tackling IWT, initially in response to the elephant poaching crisis in East Africa and then much wider and has since developed a particular understanding of the roles of the UN, private sector and philanthropic actors in tackling IWT, and in successfully harnessing multiple stakeholders and skillsets to combat IWT at multiple levels. Paul currently works for Kilimanyika Consulting Group / Nature Investment Group.

Rebecca Drury

Rebecca has 20 years’ experience in international conservation. In her role as Head of Wildlife Trade at Fauna & Flora, Rebecca developed and led the organisation's global Wildlife Trade programme to prevent illegal and unsustainable trade in wild species, with an emphasis on rights-based approaches, crime prevention and demand reduction. Rebecca has an MSc in Anthropology, Environment and Development and a PhD in Human Ecology from UCL, with her research focusing on consumer demand for wildlife products in Southeast Asia. She has published numerous academic papers and toolkits on wildlife trade. Rebecca is currently working at Chronos Sustainability where she works with a range of organisations to reduce biodiversity impacts, including resource over-exploitation.

Rob Small

Rob is the Senior Technical Specialist for Livelihoods & Governance (Africa) at Fauna & Flora. He has over 20 years' experience working at the intersection of multi-dimensional poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation, and has an interdisciplinary background with training in biological and social sciences.

Sheldon Jordan

Sheldon has extensive practical experience, ranging from working as a field officer to leading the wildlife enforcement programme for the Canadian government, in addition to working with INTERPOL and leading international efforts on operations and policy.

Steven Broad

Steven is experienced in organisational and consultancy engagement focused on the design and implementation of initiatives to tackle illicit wildlife trade and enable responsible nature-based business. His particular focus is on: wildlife crime research, investigations, social and behaviour change communications; situation analysis and intervention planning for IWT projects and programmes; and inter-governmental policy engagement.

Yolan Friedman

Yolan is currently the CEO of the Endangered Wildlife Trust which has a dedicated programme addressing illegal wildlife trade in the region. She is a director on the Board of South African National Parks (SANParks) and chairs the SANParks Conservation and Socio-economic Transformation Committee which oversees all conservation and community development issues, including their focus on IWT. She has spent a considerable part of her career designing, implementing, or evaluating meaningful biodiversity conservation programmes that deliver maximum impact for stakeholders across areas such as conservation and community development, sustainable livelihoods, strengthening law enforcement, legal frameworks and compliance focused programmes, and addressing various aspects of the illicit wildlife trade chain.

Ex-officio members

Jules McAlpine

Jules is a Senior CITES Policy Advisor involved in areas concerning legal and illegal trade, having worked in the UK CITES Scientific Authority at JNCC for a decade. He leads on aquatic species matters, although his work covers a diverse range of areas from terrestrial and aquatic species-specific action, zoonotic diseases and climate change. Jules attends international CITES meetings on behalf of the UK and is a member of several working groups, including on leopards, rhinos, and sharks. Jules also oversees the chairing of the Wildlife Crime Conservation Advisory Group (WCCAG) which assesses the conservation risk to species and habitats from wildlife crime in the UK from an enforcement perspective, and identifies and recommends priorities for concerted action.

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