Us

Staff

Lilian Painter completed her PhD in Liverpool University, United Kingdom in Behavioural Ecology, before starting work in the Greater Madidi-Tambopata Landscape. She is now director of the Bolivia country program. She has led the development of management plans over 2,300,000 hectares of proteceted areas in the landscape and promoted alliances to support conservation with a wide array on organizations from indigenous and peasant organizations, to local, regional and national state and private entities. She has been awarded a prize by the protected area service of Bolivia as the most important contribution to the protected area service from civil society.

Rob Wallace volunteered for WCS in eastern Bolivia for two years before completing a WCS supported PhD on spider monkey behavioral ecology. He is now the Director of the Greater Madidi-Tambopata Landscape Conservation Program in northwestern Bolivia and southeastern Peru. Since 1999 he has led research teams on jaguars, Andean bears, Andean condors, giant otters, and various ungulates and primates, including the discovery of a new species of titi monkey. He has helped supervise 40 Bolivian undergraduate and postgraduate Biology students in the development of theses. He is a member of the IUCN Neotropical Primate, Tapir, Otter and Cracid Specialist Groups. He also works on a wide variety of community-based natural resource management projects and works on indigenous organization and protected area conservation planning and monitoring and the technical aspects of institutional strengthening.

Oscar Loayza is an agronomist by profession with specialization in rural development in protected areas and specialty degree in human geography and methodologies for environmental and social research. It has started its activity as a researcher in South American camelids and precisely from its relationship with Vicuña 1996 has taken over as director of the National Wildlife Ulla Ulla , from which it has served more than 11 years working in areas protected from Bolivia as director Ulla Ulla- Apolobamba (1996-2001) and Madidi (2001-2004) and as Director of Planning National Service of Protected Areas ( 2004-2006). After a brief stint as head of Foundation Intercoopera issues Water and Biodiversity (2006-2007) , has initiated activities in WCS where he currently holds the position of deputy director of the conservation program of the great landscape Madidi - Tambopata and responsible coordination component of territorial management and protected areas

Elvira Salinas is a psychologist by training and has completed postgraduate studies in protected area planning and in Andean and Amazonian history at the San Andrés University in Bolivia. She has specialized in topics related to environmental management, from a historical and social perspective, allowing her to work in environmental planning, environmental and historical research, protected area management, environmental education and communication. As monitoring and communication coordinator in WCS Bolivia, Elvira has supported systematization and outreach of the outcomes of the Greater Madidi-Tambopata Landscape Conservation Program. She has also collaborated in editing scientific and technical documents, organizing photographic exhibitions and communication events and in the design and implementation of a communication strategy. She has published several books and articles on environmental management, protected areas and related to the cultural value of wildlife.

Guido Ayala is a Biologist, with a Master’s degree in Ecology and Conservation from the UMSA, currently, he is a doctoral candidate in Biology and Ecology of Global Changes at the Aveiro University, Portugal. Since 2001, he started working on fauna research in WCS, mainly on landscapes species such as jaguars, white-lipped peccary, lowland tapir, giant otter, Andean bear and another mammal’s species, through standard methodologies: camera traps, transects, censuses and others, in order to study the ecology and abundance of the species and generate information that will help on their conservation and management. He has also supported several students in their thesis projects and has participated in courses aimed at the training of park rangers. Committed with outreach and environmental education of children, youth and adults, he has organized outreach events about the Bolivian fauna.

Bolivian sociologist with a bachelor degree in Sociology from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, in La Paz, Bolivia, and holds a Masters degree in Amazon Studies from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) - Ecuador. She has over 20 years experience working with indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon and is an author of books and articles based on social research on indigenous peoples, natural resource management, co-administration of protected areas and gender issues. Since 2011 she has been working with WCS as social specialist on indigenous organizations and gender issues. Among her most outstanding works is the support to the Tacana Indigenous Council (CIPTA) in the design of their Territorial Management Plan in two versions, one for the period between 2000 to 2005 and the other from 2014 until 2024. Additionally, she is technically coordinating a process of systematizing more than ten years experience in indigenous territorial management by the Tacana People.

Guido Miranda, born in Potosí, is a Biologist from UMSA (Universidad mayor de San Andrés) La Paz Bolivia. Since the beginning of his career, he was an associate researcher at the Limnology Unit of the Ecology Institute. He conducted his first research on the biology and ecology of cave fishes in Toro Toro National Park and hot spring fishes in Potosi. He has worked in ornamental fish projects in several areas of the Amazon. Since 2007, he is part of the WCS Bolivia team coordinating wildlife management projects with indigenous communities in northern La Paz and developing research work on fishes. He has several publications about wildlife management and Bolivian ichthyofauna.