Expertise: Scientific
Languages: English, Portuguese (basic)
Location: Monchique, Algarve, Portugal
Web: www.WildTrack.org
Overview
British wildlife biologist Zoe Jewell qualified as a veterinarian and worked in wildlife monitoring in Zimbabwe and Namibia in the 1990s. She co-authored research during this period which showed that the invasive techniques used in monitoring were negatively impacting on female black rhino fertility, and that radio-collar failure rates were too high to be sustainable. Working with expert indigenous trackers, she developed a non-invasive footprint identification technique (FIT) which could be used to monitor endangered animals at the species, individual, age-class and sex levels. She co-founded WildTrack in 2004 with Sky Alibhai, to develop and implement these techniques for monitoring endangered species.
WildTrack is associated with the SAS Institute in developing new image-extraction and statistical techniques for non-invasive monitoring, and has affiliated wildlife monitoring projects developing and using FIT in more than 15 countries and over 5 continents. Zoe is actively engaged in citizen science in building the world's first endangered species footprint database which will be used as an open-access source for algorithm development for FIT in different species. She has delivered presentations on her work widely in Europe, Africa and North America, at meetings, conferences and universities. WildTrack was awarded the 2002 Smithsonian Computerworld Award in the Environment, Energy and Agriculture prize for the footprint identification technique. Zoe is also interested in the broader fields of animal welfare, ethics issues in scientific research and the promotion of a vegan diet as a practical means of improving animal welfare, biodiversity and human health. She enjoys cycling, hiking, tracking, writing, and observing wildlife.
Publications
Zoe has published in journals including Endangered Species Research, the Journal of Zoology and Oryx, contributed to the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Welfare, and written numerous wildlife monitoring reports. WildTrack research has been featured in major newspapers, popular science magazines and internet publications, and videos have been published on YouTube at WildTracking.
