Dewar Donnithorne-Tait
MA MBA FRAeS FIoD
Born 1952 Edinburgh, Scotland, Dewar attended Christ’s College, Cambridge, graduating in Natural Sciences and conducting post-graduate research in Applied Biology. His MBA focused on business and financial strategy. His main expertise lies in the areas of business strategy and governance, commercializing new technology (principally ICT and unmanned systems) and new media production. He has a passionate and very long standing interest in wildlife conservation and photography.
He has 20 years of government service in operations, intelligence, acquisition, research management and capability management. He was Head of UK Operations and then eEurope Envoy for Sun Microsystems Federal until setting up his own company in 2000. As personal consultant to the Minister, he played a key role in the Belgian Government's eGovernment strategy.
During 30 years he worked several unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) and unmanned aircraft system (UAS) research, development and acquisition projects. He was Chairman of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVSI) (www.auvsi.org) based in Washington DC and was funded by AUVSI as a consultant to work remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) standards. He was the founding Chairman of the Royal Aeronautical Society's UAS Specialist Group. He was President and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Unmanned Vehicle Systems and was Vice President and International Director AFCEA (www.afcea.org), receiving the Admiral Jon L. Boyes Medal in 2004. He was the founding Secretary of EUROCAE WG73 UAS and is currently a Vice-Chairman and a work package co-ordinator with the group. He also coordinates 5 work packages in EUROCAE WG93 sRPAS. An experienced commercial RPAS operator since 2007, he is working to commercialize unmanned systems.
He has been actively involved in wildlife conservation for more than 40 years and has been a member of Fauna & Flora International (formerly Fauna & Flora Preservation Society) throughout that time. He has led projects to carry out conservation assessment and management studies on the the highly endangered Hangul (Kashmir Stag) and on the Giant Palm Civet, Babirusa and Mountain Anoa in Sulawesi. He has been studying African wildlife since he was five years old and has gained much knowledge and expertise with East African wildlife and its management, now visiting Tanzania annually. His wife, Alison, and he put into place a range of specific conservation measures on their family farm in West Sussex, UK, to preserve valuable populations of rare mammals, birds and butterflies. Their Canadian home is at the East entrance to Banff National Park and they visit the Park several times a week to study and photograph the wildlife.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Conservation Biologist
Muhammad Naeem Awan is a Conservation Biologist and recently
working as Conservation Officer with WWF-Pakistan. His research interests
include monitoring wildlife populations and their habitats in the Western
Himalayan landscape. His particular focus is on the threatened wildlife of the
region, including Western Tragopan, Cheer Pheasant and Asiatic Black Bear, and
preparing the long term conservation strategic plans for these species of
global concern. He has more than 15 peer reviewed published article on wildlife
and its conservation. He is also helping the local education and conservation
departments in capacity building in research and conservation in Pakistan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MOHD. SAJID IDRISI,
Conservation Biologist
Mr. Idrisi, considers himself fortunate to be in this profession, which gives him plenteous opportunities to connect to some of the mostremote and rural areas of the country. According to him, the nature of work keeps him attached to ground--to the real issues a developing country like us facing today. With a field experience and exposure to almost every bio-geographic region of the country, he started his career with wildlife conservation and gradually developed multidisciplinary attitude to understand and tackle various conservation issues in India.
Idrisi, completed B.Sc, in Biotechnolgy from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2008 followed by M.Sc. Biodiversity and Conservation from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi in 2010 and later M.Phil in Ecological Informatics from Cochin University of Science and Technology, CUSAT, Cochin. Interested in integrative approach towards conservation and management of natural resources--and the linked sustainable livelihood and socioecological systems, his work lies across three cross-cutting broad themes viz. Landscapes, Livelihoods and Governance.
With a passion for science writing he writes for some popular magazines and journals in the country and also holds a Certificate in Science Writing with distinction from Stanford University.
His current research and activities includes urban biodiversity assessment, agro-forestry projects, citizen science, capacity building and training activities, technical/science writing for some conservation and development organisation in India.
He highly advocates the use of gesospatial technologies, innovative web tools and portals, crowd-sourced information, and technology aided research as a fundamental part of various conservation and sustainability projects.
