Associate Professor James Watson

The University of Queensland / Wildlife Conservation Society

Associate Professor James Watson is a Principle Research Fellow at the University of Queensland and the Director of the Climate Change Initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society. A former army officer (and distinguished graduate from Australian Defence Force Academy and Royal Military College), James completed his doctorate at the Oxford University in 2004, where funded by a Rhodes Scholarship, he explored the effects of habitat fragmentation and deforestation on biodiversity in Madagascar. Since his PhD and before joining WCS, he has worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California (San Diego) and at the University of Queensland, and as a senior forest campaigner for The Wilderness Society in Australia. He is currently co-chair of the IUCN climate change specialist group, serves on the leadership committees for the Science for Nature and People (SNAP) Initiative, the International Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Data and Knowledge Task Force, and was recently elected the global president-elect of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is an associate editor of three conservation journals (Conservation Biology, Diversity and Distributions, and Pacific Conservation Biology) and has published more than 80 peer reviewed and popular articles on conservation related issues.