Operation Wallacea
Lauren Wilson is a Conservation Biologist I at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality since September 2023. Lauren has extensive experience in animal care and herpetological research, with roles including Animal Care Associate at Rover.com and Venomous Snake Specialist at Operation Wallacea, where responsibilities involved handling, identifying, and relocating venomous snakes, leading herpetological surveys, and mentoring students. Prior positions include Lead Keeper and Animal Keeper at Zootastic Park, along with various roles at Georgia Southern University that involved teaching and research assistance in ecology and evolution. Lauren holds a Master of Science in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Georgia Southern University and a Bachelor's degree in Biology from Maryville College.
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Operation Wallacea
Operation Wallacea is a series of biological and social science expedition projects that operate in remote locations across the world. These expeditions are designed with specific wildlife conservation aims in mind - from identifying areas needing protection, through to implementing and assessing conservation management programmes. Large teams of university academics, who are specialists in various aspects of biodiversity or social and economic studies, are concentrated at the target study sites. Research Assistants and dissertation students joining the surveys have the option of customising their own itinerary from a range of training and science options. The surveys result in a large number of publications in peer-reviewed journals each year, have resulted in 30 vertebrate species new to science being discovered, 4 'extinct' species being re-discovered and $2 million levered from funding agencies to set up best practice management examples at the study sites. These large survey teams of academics and volunteers that are funded independently of normal academic sources have enabled large temporal and spatial biodiversity and socio-economic data sets to be produced, and provide information to help with organising effective conservation management programmes.