Conservation Imperatives Co-Author and Granting Coordinator

Andy Lee is a Program Coordinator and Research Scientist for Biodiversity at RESOLVE, focusing on advancing the organization's social enterprise, Nightjar. He oversees the development and deployment of TrailGuard projects, collaborating with international conservation groups to deliver the AI-enabled camera-alert system, which aims to protect endangered wildlife and promote human-wildlife coexistence.

Within the Conservation Solutions program, Andy conducts research on global biodiversity conservation, including the Global Safety Net and Conservation Imperatives, while also facilitating grant-making to expand protection into endangered habitats. His mission is to address the most pressing threats to wildlife through the creative application of science, technology, and collaborative processes. Prior to joining RESOLVE, Andy completed his Master's degree at Yale University, where he studied the policy processes of large carnivore reintroductions in South Africa. His previous research experience also includes the behavioral ecology of coastal dolphins in Hong Kong, human-wildlife coexistence in Tibet, and illegal wildlife trade in China.

Conservation Imperatives Co-Author and Global Safety Net Visionary

Karl Burkart is the Deputy Director of One Earth and formerly the Director of Media, Science & Technology at the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Karl oversees the production and distribution of the Global Safety Net, of which the Magenta Layer, or Rarity Index, is the basis of Conservation Imperatives. As co-author and conceptual framer of “Conservation Imperatives” (Frontiers Journal, 2024), Karl works on how to bring the data science into real-time application through a series of relationships, and the creation, teaching and advocacy of our next models in mapmaking.

Karl spearheaded the development of the landmark textbook Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement Goals (Springer Nature, 2019). He is co-author of “A Global Deal for Nature: Guiding Principles, Milestones, and Targets” (Science Advances, 2019), a scientific paper establishing the evidence base for an ambitious conservation agenda covering 50% of the world’s lands and seas, which was endorsed by the IUCN including a 30x30 interim target subsequently adopted by the 2022 UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

India Conservation Imperatives

Induja Gandhiprasad is a graduate student of Environmental Conservation at University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is an active member of the India Conservation Imperatives Working Group. Induja will present on Conservation Imperative rarity species at the 2025 Indiaspora closing keynote. She will work with The Nature Conservancy this summer to assess impacts of conservation projects in the Great Plains region on people for her final thesis. In the past, she worked as a project manager for sustainability projects focused on SDG 6: providing clean water and sanitation in rural parts of Central and South India using solar energy.

With her GIS and impact evaluation skills, she provides useful insights for organizations, partner NGOs and donors to make decisions and improve the social engineering aspects with the beneficiary communities. She previously worked in Auroville International Township in South India on urban and regional planning projects driven by environmental principles. Apart from this, she has been involved voluntarily in different community projects such as waste management and community education. 

Conservation Imperatives Co-Author and Spatial Data Architect

Dr. Anup Joshi is Program Coordinator and Research Associate for Conservation Sciences Graduate Program at the University of Minnesota. He is involved in the mapping of wildlife and conservation priority setting and is co-author of some of the most important research in global conservation priority mapping. He is one of the co-designers of the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL), a corridor connecting 14 protected areas in Nepal and India, which has facilitated movements of wildlife including tigers, rhinos and elephants and doubled the tiger population. He initiated a community forest program with local people in the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park in Nepal, leading to the establishment of community forests across lowlands of Nepal. 

Anup has deep expertise in large mammal conservation; habitat management and restoration through community participation; use of geographic information systems and remote sensing for landscape level planning and management; and local capacity building, to strengthen community-based conservation. His current research is focused on identifying remaining natural habitats outside the current global protected area system for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestrations.

Indonesia Conservation Imperatives

Born in Blitar, East Java, Dr. Titiek Setyawati holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, a Master’s from Mississippi State University, and a Bachelor’s in Forestry from IPB. Her expertise includes biodiversity conservation, sustainable forest management, invasive species, and environmental impact management. She worked as a senior forest ecology researcher at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (1989–2022), and since April 2022, she leads invasive species research at BRIN. She has led or collaborated on projects with CIFOR, UNDP, UNEP-CABI, GIZ, KfW, FAO, and WCS Indonesia (2018–2024).

Titiek contributed to developing and revising forest certification standards (PHPL, PHTL, FSC, PEFC), and has over 20 years of experience as an FSC auditor. She has conducted numerous HCV assessments and serves as a Quality Panel Member of HCVRN and FSC’s Standard Development Group. Since 2018, she lectures at IPB’s Postgraduate Forestry Program on invasive alien species and supervises graduate students. Since 2022, she also serves as a technical expert for Environmental Impact Assessments with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

Conservation Imperatives Co-Author and International Strategy

Dr. Eric Dinerstein is Chief Scientist and Senior Conservation Counsel at ConservationXLabs. Previously, he served as Director of Biodiversity and Wildlife Solutions at RESOLVE and Chief Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund. He co-authored “Conservation Imperatives” (Frontiers Journal, 2024) and is focused on protecting range-limited, threatened species globally.

Eric is leading the global advocacy and outreach strategy for Conservation Imperatives, including advising SPACES, working on the CI Prize, and NBSAP advocacy. He is taking the next steps in the habitat conservation of rare and threatened species as part of a larger global biodiversity strategy to counteract the ongoing sixth mass extinction driven by human activities. He has contributed to conservation plans for iconic regions such as the Galapagos, Chihuahuan Desert, Himalayas, panda ranges in China, and Montana’s northern Great Plains. Dinerstein has worked in many countries and published extensively on large mammal conservation, including books on rhinos and tigers.

Conserve Communications

Adrianne Ramsey is the Director of Communications of Conserve. She is focusing on branding, website development, communication strategies and messaging regarding Conservation Imperatives so that the visual and written materials stay in integrity to the original project plan. She worked with Haley, For the past 3 years, Adrianne has been the Director of Communication of the Art into Acres non-profit, overseeing detailed press releases, essays and language related to philanthropic funding and the creation of proposed Permanent Protected Areas.

As an independent curator and arts editor, Adrianne has organized exhibitions and programming for Berkeley Art Center, Fellows of Contemporary Art, LA Artcore, and Root Division, and was the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of “GIRLS” (2017-2024), a digital magazine featuring long-form interviews with femme-identifying contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers. She holds both a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and an Masters of Art in Curatorial Practices from the University of Southern California.

Conservation Imperatives Working Group

Kate is the Director of Philanthropy and Partnerships at One Earth, where she works to establish, strengthen, and diversify external partnerships and scale resources for on-the-ground climate action. She has broad experience working in environmental and policy-focused non-profits, including the RAND Corporation, the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Canopy, and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, where she oversaw the Global Wildlife and Landscape Conservation portfolio.

Kate holds a master’s degree in Public Administration (environmental policy focus) and an undergraduate degree in Anthropology focusing on primate studies, both from Texas Tech University. She has a deep love and appreciation for wild places and the furry, feathered, and finned critters that call them home. Originally from Texas, Kate lives in Los Angeles with her partner and their dog, Ibby. Kate is a part of the Conservation Imperatives Working Group and has been overseeing the Conservation Imperative site database of projects ready for support to become permanent protected areas.

India Conservation Imperatives

Priyanka Justa is a Ph.D. student at the Wildlife Institute of India. Her research focuses on carnivores in the Trans-Himalayan landscape of Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh—including snow leopards, Himalayan wolves, red foxes, and free-ranging dogs. Priyanka is passionate about research that leads to tangible conservation outcomes on the ground, particularly in the ecologically fragile and culturally significant Himalayan landscapes. Her interests include landscape ecology, human-wildlife coexistence, community-based conservation, and the integration of science with policy.

She is currently working to develop proposals for new Conservation Reserves in Himachal Pradesh, a mountainous state in northern India, focusing on areas identified as Conservation Imperatives. As part of the India Conservation Imperatives Working Group, her work is centered in the high-altitude districts of Lahaul-Spiti, Kinnaur, and Chamba—regions within the Great and Trans-Himalayan ranges that are home to elusive species such as the snow leopard.

Philippines Conservation Imperatives

Neil Aldrin Mallari is the Regional Focal Point of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (2021-2025), a National Geographic Explorer (2016), an Ashoka Fellow, and a biodiversity conservation practitioner and advocate. He is the founder/co-founder of a number of biodiversity conservation NGOs in the Philippines including the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Philippines and Center of Conservation Innovations PH where he is the President.

He has extensive experience in working with government agencies, funding agencies, development partners and the private sector and has influenced important conservation policies and investment portfolio for biodiversity conservation. Aldrin completed his undergraduate from the University of the Philippines-Los Banos and his PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He has more than 40 scientific publications under his belt including two award-winning and seminal conservation books: Threatened Birds of the Philippines and Key Conservation Sites in the Philippines and the Sukat ng Kalikasan (Nature Metrics) toolkit. Aldrin is concurrently an Ecology professor at De La Salle University and the Far Eastern University in the Philippiness.

Brazil Conservation Imperatives

Carlos Peres is a Professor of Conservation Ecology at University of East Anglia, UK and Co-Founder and Science Director of Instituto Juruá, Brazil. This nonprofit transdisciplinary institute focuses on community-based solutions for conservation problems across the Amazon. Peres has been internationally recognized for his innovative tropical forest ecology and conservation work since early in his career.

His research includes vertebrate community ecology in Amazonian forests; the population ecology of key aquatic and nontimber forest resources; the biological criteria for designing nature reserves; extinction dynamics in fragmented forest landscapes; scalable community-based integrated conservation-development solutions; and biodiversity responses to land-use change. He currently leads the Amazon Biodiversity Carbon Expeditions, the most comprehensive multi-taxa quantitative biodiversity inventories in the tropics. In 2023, he won the inaugural Frontiers Planet Prize from the Frontiers Research Foundation.

Conservation Imperatives Co-Author and Grants Program Manager

Carly Vynne is Chief Program Officer and Director of RESOLVE’s Conservation Solutions Program, which develops innovative approaches to restore and conserve nature. She also oversees the Quick Response Fund for Nature, supporting fundraising and grants to Conservation Imperative sites. Carly works across RESOLVE’s program areas—Conservation Solutions, Healthy Communities, and Sustainable Resources—to strengthen strategy, delivery, and identify new opportunities.

She provides science support for global biodiversity research and conservation efforts, including the Global Safety Net, and leads community-driven regional programs for natural resource planning and protection. Previously, Carly led biodiversity planning across Asia, Africa, and South America, and developed species-based conservation programs in the western U.S. and Alaska. She is also a co-founder of TerrAdapt, a cloud-based tool helping decision-makers understand the ecological impacts of land-use decisions. Her core motivation is ensuring that nature and humanity can thrive together.

India Conservation Imperatives

Dr. Salvador Lyngdoh is a Scientist & Associate Professor at Wildlife Trust of India. His Doctoral work was in the Spatial Ecology and Predation Pattern of Wolf in Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh, India at Saurashtra University. He is a carnivore ecologist with 17+ years of professional background in Ecology and Wildlife Science. His prime interest is in understanding resource use by mammalian species in diverse forest and lands use types particularly carnivores. He teaches and trains various capacities on subject of population ecology, movement ecology, community ecology, habitat ecology and forest natural resource management.

Recent papers include “Caught in the Act: Camera Traps Capture Rare Mammal Species from Biodiversity Hotspot of Manas National Park, Assam, India”(Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 2024) and “Carnivore Chronicles: Co-occurrence and habitat use in the tropical forest of Manas National Park, North-East India” (Journal of Wildlife Science, 2024).

Conservation Imperatives Co-Author and Conserve Administrator

Dr. Haley Mellin founded Art into Acres, a non-profit which supports permanent land conservation on behalf of the cultural community. The work supports the creation of new Indigenous-led and community-led protected areas, along with National Parks, supporting 74 million acres or 30 million hectares of new designation protection. The focus is intact forest landscapes (IFL's), as advocated by mentor Dr. Tom Lovejoy.

Haley co-authored “Conservation Imperatives” (Frontiers Journal, 2024), identifying 164 million hectares crucial for protecting rare and threatened species. With a focus on bringing the paper into landscape and community protection, she is administering Conserve, a global initiative to secure long-term habitat protection for all species. The conservation granting involves designating permanent conservation protection and rights for Indigenous Peoples, government-protected areas, with a focus on areas of high biodiversity and betadiversity.

Conservation Imperatives Co-Author

Associate Programme Officer at UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre.