What I Do

I spent many years doing survey and monitoring work on the premise that once provided with information on the severity of the crisis, government decision makers and the broader conservation community would act. But years of futile prodding taught me that if you really want something done in an economically depressed region with weak government capacity and civil society institutions, you need to do it yourself. I’ve spent the last decade doing necessary things that other people couldn’t do because of technical complexity or wouldn’t do because of controversy. This started with my work on Ebola vaccination. But I gradually realized that, in an age of MAGA nationalism, the biggest challenge is now the dwindling of public funding, the traditional mainstay of gorilla conservation efforts . So, I’ve been focusing on finding new funding streams that don’t require either government grants or private donations. This has included work with new technologies that have the potential to lower the startup and recurrent costs of gorilla tourism. And I’ve now moved into the realm of publishing.