WCS COLOMBIA
STAFF

Equipo de trabajo

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Luisa Rincón Bustamante
Especialista en grandes mamíferos
Biologist from the University of Quindío, with five years of experience in the study, monitoring and management of the Andean bear. Luisa is in charge of supporting the technical coordination of the field work and the management actions of the Conservamos la Vida project developed in the Central and Western mountain ranges of Colombia.
Luz Dary Acevedo
Coordinadora de Salud
Luz Dary is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine DVM from the Universidad del Tolima (Ibagué, Colombia). For more than 15 years, she has worked in wildlife health, management, and conservation in different zones of the country, especially in protected areas. She coordinated the Wildlife Program and generated the National Wildlife Strategy for National Parks of Colombia. Her experience Wildlife Health has been focused on the surveillance of diseases and the assessment of associated risk factors to reduce threats in different species and landscapes, including the development of conservation initiatives with peasant, indigenous, and Afro-descendant communities. She joined the WCS Colombia Program in 2012 and since then she has coordinated the Wildlife Health Program and since 2017 she has led the initiatives of the Colombia Program to reduce Wildlife trafficking, jointly with WCS countries in the Andes-Amazonia region. With the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, she supports the implementation of the National and Binational Strategies for the prevention and control of wildlife trafficking, as well as the National conservation programs for threatened species, especially amphibians and primates.
Manuel Andrés Rodríguez Rocha
Líder paisaje Andes-Chocó
Manuel is a biologist from the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia, with more than 10 years of experience in research and monitoring within the framework of the conservation areas. He has an academic master's degree in Management and Conservation of Tropical Forests and Biodiversity (CATIE) evaluating the "Potential responses of fruit bats to climate change, in conservation areas in an altitude gradient of the Caribbean of Costa Rica." His professional interest has focused on the use of information in the management of socio-ecological systems. He is currently Leader of Conservation Areas at WCS Colombia, supporting processes to expand conservation areas and the implementation of the SMART (spatial monitoring and reporting tool) to strengthen the management of research data. and monitoring in the National System of Protected Areas.
Mara Contreras
Líder paisaje Orinoquia
Mara is a biologist with an MSc in Environmental Sustainability Management. She has 16 years of experience working in protected areas. She currently supports, scientifically, the implementation of the route for declaration of new prioritized protected areas in Colombia.
María Antonia Espitia
Líder Procesos Sociales
María Antonia is a psychologist. She joined WCS in 2014 as coordinator of the Wildlife Project in the Magdalena Medio region. She has led the development of participatory, organizational, educational, investigative, deliberative and environmental territorial planning practices within rural communities, with the purpose of enabling them to act as managers of their own initiatives. With her work, María Antonia mainly strives to strengthen the healthy coexistence between man and nature.
Maricruz Jaramillo de León
Especialista en investigación regional
MSc, PhD in Ecology, Evolution and Systematics at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. During her graduate studies she led the long-term monitoring of the Galapagos hawk contributing to invasive species eradication studies, and avian health surveys to understand the dynamics of avian malaria in the Galapagos archipelago. In conservation, she has conducted wildlife population studies, local and regional threat assessments, and implemented conservation plans and research for endangered birds and wild cats that included tracking animal movement. Currently works in understanding key components in the interactions between wildlife, domestic animals and humans to prevent the emergence of zoonotic diseases.
Mario Santana
Conservation Areas Specialist
Mario is a biologist at the University of Santa Rosa de Cabal, where he researched the effectiveness of the conservation of the Andean bear and its habitat for the protection of threatened species in Colombia. Since 2021 he joined WCS as a consultant in the management team of negative human-cat interactions where he worked in areas such as NNP Tatamá, RNP Páramo del Duende and RIMD Cuchilla del San Juan. He is currently a specialist in conservation areas where he supports human-cat coexistence processes, expansion of protected areas, wildlife monitoring, as well as the implementation of SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) in the Andes-Chocó landscape.
Mónica Lozano Hernández
Financial Manager
Nicole Garcia Largo
Auxiliar de Recursos Humanos
HR Technician with extensive experience in human talent management, currently working as a Human Resources Assistant at WCS Colombia. I am responsible for payroll, social security, wellbeing, and attention to the internal staff of the organization.
Paola Andrea Mejía
Coordinadora programa marino
Biologist and Doctor in Sciences-Biology from the Universidad del Valle, Colombia. Marine leader of WCS Colombia since 2017. She has been supporting processes for the declaration and management of marine protected areas, as well as strategic planning processes based on community participation and adaptive management, as mechanisms to direct and execute actions towards the sustainability of the resources and their ecosystem services. She has experience in population assessments of fishery resources, based on both life history and demographics and poor data, aiming to contribute to the management of those resources of economic importance and food security of coastal communities.

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