I’m a Colombian ecologist graduated from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in 2014. Since I was a student I started being passionate about carnivore conservation (especially wild cats) and I conducted my undergrate thesis in human-felid conflict to understand better the variables influencing it in Colombia eastern plains, my home region. After finishing my studies, I worked in the registration of private natural reserves in eastern region of Colombia in order to protect seasonally flooded savannah ecosystems, working with landowners in conservation plans for the reserves and in participative monitoring biodiversity programs. But my most professionally enriching experience was working with Panthera for two years where I improved my skills for camera trapping surveys and scientific writing. During my time with Panthera I contributed to camera trapping surveys in jaguar habitats for carbon credit projects and I was the lead researcher for a jaguar tourism strengthening project. For this project we conducted a camera trap survey for one year long to monitor jaguar and their preys and we built a jaguar ID guide with 45 different individuals with the historic camera trapping records of ten years. In this project we also designed a jaguar sighting protocol to promote better practices for tourism and trained the local guides to apply them. My working experience and my professional formation provided me with strengths to work with local communities from participative approaches and I have interest in building bridges between scientific and local knowledge.

Joining the WildCRU’s Postgraduate Diploma represents a magnificent opportunity to build stronger quantitative skills for applied research in carnivore conservation, allowing me also to broad my vision of other global efforts for carnivore coexistence and exposing me to a world-class group of researchers. I hope this experience will allow me to explore my academic interests, like trophic cascades after the removal of apex predators in ecosystems, and the social dimension of human-felid conflict.

In the long-term, I hope to harness what I learn at WildCRU to continue contributing to conservation in Colombia. I would like to pursue a PhD and work between academic and applied conservation, to simultaneously inspire a new generation of conservationists while addressing the present challenges Colombia faces in biodiversity conservation.