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Animals need space to move while human communities need the landscape to live. This discussion connected community leaders and technology experts working in Africa and the Great Plains of North America to set aside corridors so animals, including endangered species, and humans can thrive side by side.

About the Participants

Irene Amoke is the executive director of the Kenya Wildlife Trust. A landscape ecologist with over fifteen years of experience in field ecology, GIS, and project management, Irene Amoke worked with the Kenya Wildlife Service on human-wildlife coexistence projects, conducted elephant surveys and managed a national elephant mortality database. She led field surveys in private game reserves in South Africa and managed several environmental and sustainability projects under the Department of Environment Food & Rural Affairs, Oxford Brookes University, both in the United Kingdom.

Katy Beattie is the Wild Sky specialist for American Prairie. Before joining American Prairie in 2019, Beattie worked as a field biologist for various projects across the west. Her focus has always been on prairie ecosystems. Through her role as Wild Sky specialist, Beattie works with private landowners in the Central Montana region by incentivizing wildlife friendly land management practices and working to shift tolerance toward wildlife on working lands.

Deb K. Davidson is the vice president at the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. Davidson has worked in conservation philanthropy and wildlife protection programs for over twenty years. Her work has largely focused on the protection of wildlife corridors and expanding the field of large landscape conservation, with a specific focus on network development, and connectivity policy, science, and practice in North America. As the vice president, Davidson directs the center’s national and global connectivity conservation efforts, fundraising, and partnership development.

Amy Scarpignato is a research ecologist and bird conservation specialist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Migratory Bird Center, which is dedicated to understanding, conserving, and championing the grand phenomenon of bird migration. From 2003 to 2009, Scarpignato traveled around the country as an itinerant field biologist, working on nearly fifteen different research projects with many different species of songbirds, raptors, waterfowl, and shorebirds.