David Wilkie

As Executive Director of of Conservation Measures and Communities for the Wildlife Conservation Society, David Wilkie seeks to strengthen the practice and impact of WCS conservation worldwide. David joined WCS in 2001. Since then he has lead efforts to ensure that WCS field programs identify explicit conservation objectives for which we hold ourselves accountable, and tactically monitor and report our conservation progress. He is a founder of the Conservation Measures Partnership – a joint venture of conservation NGOs committed to improving the practice of conservation by promoting adoption of a consensus-based set of standards for planning, implementation and measuring conservation impact. He was co-chair of the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force, and helped establish the Conservation Initiative on Human Rights. He is a member of the WCS Institutional Review Board for protection of human subjects. David has over 30 years of experience working in international conservation in Central Africa, Central and South America, and Asia. He is a wildlife ecologist with a post-doctoral anthropology specialization in the socio-economic drivers of natural resource use practices. His work covers the impacts of trade and the commercialization of non-timber forest products on forest conservation; the role that logging plays in the commercial wildlife trade; the role that income, prices, and taste preferences play in determining demand for wildlife; the use of conditional direct payments as a tool for biodiversity conservation in developing countries; and the use of satellite imagery, and spatial simulations to model present and future tropical forest loss. He has published more than 140 peer reviewed articles and books.