Jonathan Baillie is Director of Conservation Programmes at the Zoological Society of London where he is responsible for conservation projects focusing on threatened species and their habitats in more then 60 countries. He studied as an undergraduate at Queen’s University in Canada followed by a Masters in conservation biology at Yale University and a PhD in biology at Silwood Park, Imperial College. His postdoctoral research was undertaken at the Zoological Society of London, Institute of Zoology. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford.

He conducted his PhD field research in the Gulf of Guinea focusing on restricted range island endemic birds. Subsequent to this he researched western lowland gorillas in the rainforest of Gabon. He has also conducted field work in countries such as Tanzania, Namibia, Papua and Mongolia. Dr. Baillie has played a significant role in some of the most influential documents on the status of the world’s species including the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Biodiversity chapter of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, The WWF Living Planet Report and Biodiversity chapter of the UNEP Global Environmental Outlook. He has also helped lead the development of a series of species level global biodiversity indicators for the Convention on Biological Diversity including the IUCN Sampled Red List Index and the WWF Living Planet Index. He has recently been appointed co-chair of the IUCN National Red List Working Groups and is involved in supporting a number of countries such as Nepal and Mongolia to produce National Red Lists. In January of 2006 he founded the EDGE of Existence programme with a team from ZSL which focuses on Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species. Finally, he is the lead scientific advisor for the Globe International Commission on Land Use Change and Ecosystems which reports to the Globe International G8+5 Legislators forum.