Lee Mcloughlin

After graduating my Masters in Australia I secured a position as protected areas program director for a local NGO, Ya'axche Conservation Trust, in Belize, Central America. I oversaw the growth of the organization as it took on the co-management of Belize's largest nature reserve and an adjacent agroforestry concession. After 6 years of developing programs I moved to the Wildlife Conservation Society Mesoamerica Program supporting the improvement of protected area management capacity across Central America and building public support for the five largest remaining forests in the region. Reflecting on this experience led to a growing understanding of the importance of indigenous-led conservation, and in 2021 I switched to a PhD in Global Sociocultural Studies where I am applying a political ecology approach to understand and analyse motivations behind the different approaches to protected areas and conservation in Belize.