Open Forum

Welcome to Conservation Connection, your exclusive space to engage with your peers in the SCB community who are working around the world to advance the science and practice of conserving Earth's biodiversity.

Conservation Connection is a collaborative space where you can find answers to your questions, interact with your peers on topics important to you, search the membership directory, raise your profile, build connections, share your knowledge with others, and more. Your participation drives a collaborative, engaging space and creates a self-sustaining loop that is beneficial to all members.

Be sure to update your profile to include your photo, add a bio, social media links, organization, and more. Just click the profile link in the top right corner of this page. You can display as much or as little information as you'd like. You can also set your communication preferences. By default, all members are set to receive a daily digest of activity on Conservation Connection, but if you want to receive messages in real time, weekly, or online only, you can set adjust your email preferences to what works best for you. 

We hope that this community will play an important role in increasing conservation communications, and we look forward to seeing what you create!

Finally - please introduce yourself to the community by posting to the Introduce Yourself discussion thread under Latest Discussions. In just three or four sentences, tell your colleagues in the SCB community a little about yourself and your professional or academic experience. 

Thank you for being a member of SCB and for making this community the best that it can be!

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Debborah Luke
Society for Conservation Biology
Washington DC
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My Kevin Njabo and I was born in Buea in southwest Cameroon, where I attended local primary and secondary schools, specialising in biology and maths. I later earned my BSc and MSc degrees from the Universities of Ife and Ibadan, both schools in Nigeria in biology and ecology.

In January 2002, I was granted a scholarship and moved to Boston University for my PhD program. I earned my PhD in May 2006 and my dissertation research examined the systematics and phylogeography of montane forest birds in Cameroon and included both field work in Cameroon and molecular genetic analyses in the laboratory

Between January 2007 and July 2010, I served as a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Center for Tropical Research, where my main research focus was on Emerging infectious tropical diseases, biodiversity and health, and I worked with a team investigating the effects of deforestation on the prevalence of blood-borne pathogens in African rainforest birds and vectors.

In August 2010, I was appointed Associate Director and Africa Director for the UCLA Center for Tropical Research, a position I hold to this day. I also hold a joint Faculty position at both the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability as well as the School of Public Health. My current research interests are examining the link between biodiversity and human health and I supervise a team on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) research project to study the spill-over dynamics of avian influenza in both Cameroon and Egypt. I also serve as a visiting Professor to the National University of Rwanda and to the Higher Institute of Environmental Sciences (HIES) in Yaounde Cameroon.

I serve on several professional bodies including the Board of Governors and Vice President/Membership for the Society for Conservation Biology; Council Member of the Pan African Ornithological Congress Committee (PAOCC), 2008-2016, member of the International Association for Impact Assessment, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I am also a reviewer for the Society for Conservation Biology, Students Awards Abstracts; a Mentor for the SCB Africa Section Communications/Mentoring Program since 2007 and an invited reviewer for Molecular Ecology, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution; Ostrich: Journal African of Ornithology, African Journal of Ecology, IBIS, the International Journal of Biodiversity and Conservation, Parasitology and Vector Biology and Parasitology, and Climate Change.

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Kevin Njabo
University of California, LA
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