Tales From the Frontlines

Colleen Begg (PhD)

Managing Director of Mariri and Niassa Carnivore Project, Director of TRT Conservation Foundation, Mozambique

Colleen Begg, PhD is Co-founder and Director of Niassa Lion Project in Mozambique. She has lived in Niassa Reserve – one of the largest and wildest protected areas in the world – with her family since 2003. Colleen has 25 years of field conservation experience including work with honey badgers, cheetah, wild dog and lion.

Colleen’s conservation programs employ more than 50 local Mozambicans and help protect more than 1,000 wild lions and other large carnivores in the Reserve. She works in close collaboration with the Mozambican government and many conservation partners to ensure that NLP’s efforts align with national and regional strategies for carnivore conservation. Colleen received her PhD from the Mammal Research Institute in South African and is a member of the African Lion Working Group and the IUCN Cat Specialist Group. Additionally, Colleen is a founding member and on the granting committee of the Lion Recovery Fund. She is deeply committed to Niassa, its communities, and its wildlife.

David Daballen

Head of Field Operations for Save the Elephants, Kenya

Dr. Lucy King

Head of Human-Elephant Co-Existence Program

Save the Elephants (STE) is a leader in the effort to fight the elephant ivory crisis sweeping across Africa. Together with WCN they have created the Elephant Crisis Fund to address poaching, trafficking, and demand for ivory. STE was founded by Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton during his pioneering career spanning more than 50 years in elephant research and conservation. Dr. Lucy King is the head of STE’s Human-Elephant Co-Existence Program, and founded the Elephants & Bees Project, an ingenious initiative that reduces damage from crop-raiding elephants using their instinctive avoidance of African honey bees.

Charlie Knowles

President, Co-Founder Wildlife Conservation Network

Charlie is the President and Co-Founder of the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN), which has advanced a powerful new model of wildlife conservation. WCN protects endangered species by supporting entrepreneurial conservationists who pursue strategies for people and wildlife to co-exist and thrive. The synthesis of creativity and practicality in Charlie’s approach has inspired thousands of passionate donors, as well as a rising generation of conservation pioneers.

Frank Pope

CEO of Save the Elephants, Kenya

Frank Pope is CEO of Save The Elephants. He joined Save The Elephants as COO in 2012 at the height of the poaching crisis. An experienced bush pilot, Pope is at the helm of an organisation renowned for using the power of science to secure a future for elephants. A passionate communicator, after many years in marine science and conservation Pope became the world’s first Ocean Correspondent, at The Times newspaper in London. Pope is now working with Save the Elephants’ world-leading team of scientists and conservationists to reveal the intricate and complex world of elephants and to forge innovative solutions to their protection.

Dr. Chris Thouless, QGM

Strategic Advisor & Director of The Elephant Crisis Fund

Dr. Chris Thouless has nearly 30 years of experience working for governments, NGOs and private sector in Africa and Asia. He is a specialist in wildlife conservation, community-based natural resource management, project management, protected area planning and management, public private partnerships and tourism development. He has a particular interest in elephant conservation, having worked on elephant movement patterns, human wildlife conflict and elephant surveys in several countries. He was Chairman of CITES Panel of Experts on the African Elephant in 1996 and has been a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission since 1986, and was lead author of the African Elephant Status Report (2016). He has held a number of senior positions, including coordinator of the reconstruction of the Nairobi National Museum, director of Millenium Challenge Corporation investments in community conservation in Namibia, senior wildlife biologist for the Kalahari in Botswana, chief advisor on sustainable tourism to the government of Namibia and deputy director of the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a leading private sector conservation organization in Kenya. Chris holds an MA in zoology from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal in 1991.