Profile

I was born and raised in London although both my parents are from the north-western part of Spain known as Galicia. I enjoy cities almost as much as I like being in forests mainly because I love being in places rich in diversity and life. My friends come from all sorts of backgrounds and I really enjoy spending time with them doing all sorts of things – night in chatting through to a visit to a place we have not been too before. I spend time with my family every weekend. My mum has been a real inspiration to me and I have definitely caught my love of plants from her – my office at work looks like a bit of a jungle!

I’m a bit of a sci-fi fan although to be honest enjoy reading and watching films of all sorts. My ideal evening out involves going to the theater, I particularly enjoy seeing different types of dance – from break dancing through to ballet and everything in between.

I don’t really have that much spare time but I give some of that to volunteering as a trustee for Vauxhall City Farm which is in the area I live. I love the work they do with kids in showing them what happens in a farm.

I have done all sort of work as a biologist. I started by studying butterflies and looking at how cutting down forest affects them. I then went on to study dung beetles in the same forest but worked along a large number of scientists studying all sorts of other wonderful living things like trees, snakes, frogs, birds and mammals. After that, I moved on to study two species of mammals that are only found on the island of Hispaniola (made up of two countries: Dominican Republic and Haiti)  – the species are: Solenodon and Hutia. The solenodon in particular is famous because its one of the few mammals that has a venomous bite. After spending three years studying and helping to protect these amazing animals, I returned to the UK and took up a post helping to fight wildlife trafficking and particularly trade in illegal timber. None of the work I have done would have been possible without the help of some amazing people which included fellow scientists as well as local people with amazing knowledge of nature.

Thats the wonderful thing about working in conservation – one day you are out studying animals in the forest, another day you are trying to understand what you recorded/photographed/spotted and then you find yourself sharing what you have found with others. A lot of the work we do is like detective work – its amazing how much we still dont know about wildlife.

About once every couple of months I also volunteer at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History where I study dung beetles collected from cloud forests in Central America. Insects are really remarkable creatures and massively undervalued – undervalued creatures seems to be a repeating theme with me.

In my current job most of my days are about sharing scientific results with others or helping to raise money to get work off the ground. One moment I could be speaking or emailing a journalist to explain the findings from some of our research and then contacting someone who wants to donate towards bat conservation.

I am incredibly lucky because I really enjoy all of my work.