Ecowende

Dr. Beth Polidoro is the Director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), where she is also Professor of Marine Conservation and Environmental Chemistry. Her research interests and expertise are primarily in ecological risk assessment, endangered species threat mitigation, and sustainable fisheries management. Before joining UMCES, she was the Deputy Director for the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes at Arizona State University, and Senior Research Associate with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), where she worked with scientists around the globe to quantify the impacts of anthropogenic threats on more than 20,000 marine species for inclusion in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Currently, she works on various marine and freshwater conservation initiatives and risk assessments in the United States, Europe, Asia and Oceania. She is the co-chair of the IUCN SSC Marine Fishes Red List Authority, as well as holds several key positions within the IUCN Tuna and Billfishes Specialist Group, the IUCN Coral Specialist Group, and the IUCN Marine Conservation Committee. 

Bob Rumes is a senior researcher at the Marine Ecology and Management section of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Prior to re-joining RBINS in 2010, Bob obtained a PhD in biology working on lake-sediment climate archives in Uganda and Kenya.  

Bob has extensive experience in assessing, monitoring and mitigating the environmental impacts of offshore wind farms, having coordinated the environmental impact assessments for all wind farms in Belgian waters, and having co-authored the yearly monitoring reports on the environmental impacts of these offshore wind farms since 2010. As co-chair of the ICES working group on Offshore Renewable Energy, Bob helps to identify issues that require environmental assessment for tidal (in-stream and barrage), wave and offshore wind energy, as well as other emerging marine renewable technologies. He is currently researching the ecological consequences of the development of marine renewables in the North Sea with a focus on marine mammals. 

Ward Hagemeijer is Senior Adviser at Wetlands International and has been one of the driving forces behind the biodiversity work in Wetlands International since he joined the organization back in 2000. He is working out of the Global Office in Ede, The Netherlands. Asides from that, he provides conservation and sustainability advice and implements biodiversity projects as an independent consultant.

Trained as an ecologist (Ornithology and Aquatic Ecology), Ward gained extensive experience in biodiversity assessments, monitoring and applied conservation and policy advice. After two years of work on impact assessments at the provincial government level in the Netherlands, he joined the leading Dutch ornithological NGO Sovon, where he led the research and international department for 10 years, gathering, analyzing and providing information for policy making at various levels of scale, increasingly at the international level. The step to Wetlands International in 2000 allowed a further broadening of the international horizon and shifting the focus from a taxonomic group to the wetland ecosystem type. With more than 25 years in Wetlands International, Ward has worked throughout the global network of Wetlands International on the biodiversity value of wetlands, with a focus on flyways and waterbirds. Moreover, he has worked on strengthening the corporate engagement of Wetlands International, especially in the field of biodiversity conservation. Finally, Ward is a keen field biologist, with extensive experience in monitoring, ringing and tagging birds, worldwide.  

Oliver Behr has a PhD in Biology with a focus on bat ecology from the University of Erlangen. Since 2005, he has undertaken environmental impact assessments and data analyses concerning bats at wind energy sites. Since 2006, he is Scientific Director of several studies investigating and reducing the collision risk of bats at onshore wind turbines funded by German federal ministries since 2006. Projects include the RENEBAT studies that lead to the ProBat (ProBat.org) software for the calculation of mitigation cut-in wind speeds to protect bats at wind turbines. He has also been the founder and partner of OekoFor GbR in Freiburg im Breisgau since 2018.