Our New Monitoring Officer

Ms. Ivanna Waight is ERI’s new Monitoring Officer. She joined us on January 4th 2012. Ivanna holds a Master of Science Degree in Environmental Management from the University of Nottingham, UK where she graduated with Merit honors in 2011. Her M.Sc. research focused on investigating the impacts of petroleum exploration on avian fauna and vegetation around two drill sites in Gallon Jug, Belize. Previously, she completed a Bachelor of Science Degree in Natural Resource Management from UB with Magna cum laude honors in 2010. Her undergraduate research involved an ongoing camera trapping survey of jaguar populations at the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area with the aim of investigating the impacts of logging on jaguar populations in tropical forests.

As the Monitoring Officer, she will be leading and coordinating the development and implementation of a national biodiversity monitoring program for Belize as identified under the National Protected Area System Plan (NPASP). Ivanna will also assist the Science Directors with instruction on field courses in the NRM program at the University of Belize (UB), courses in the National Protected Area Training Program and in training related to monitoring. She will be spending the next few months building her GIS skills, defining the current status of national monitoring efforts, developing objectives for the national biodiversity monitoring program and coordinating working groups for the selection of indicators.

We welcome Ivanna to the ERI family.