I am a tropical forest ecologist and conservation scientist, working as a STEP research fellow. I look for ways to protect biodiversity 1) in tropical forests used by humans, for example for logging, 2) in forests set aside for conservation, from national parks to small community protected areas, and 3) outside of forests, in cases where wildlife is traded. I feel privileged to have worked in the tropical forests of Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, and Borneo. More information is here (link to my website https://burivalova.wordpress.com/).

My current projects include:

IN THE OFFICE:  Looking at the effectiveness of different conservation strategies, in terms of on-the-ground impacts. Using literature review techniques, I have created evidence maps for conservation strategies including tropical forest certification and community forest management, and am currently using a similar approach to look at more conservation strategies, in a collaboration with the environmental news platform Mongabay.

IN THE RAINFOREST: Using soundscapes to understand large spatial scale biodiversity changes in tropical forest due to human influence, such as selective logging. Together with The Nature Conservancy, I have collected and analyzed over 3000 hours of rainforest soundscapes in Papua New Guinea, and the Indonesian part of Borneo.