Elsie Blackshaw-Crosby - Director of Legal at The Lifescape Project

Elsie is the Director of Legal at UK rewilding charity The Lifescape Project where she oversees the legal team's work focusing on understanding and applying the law as it relates to rewilding activities, including animal reintroductions. Much of her work focuses on identifying where current legal frameworks across the UK and Europe may pose a barrier to rewilding and working to identify potential solutions and ways to remove those barriers to allow rewilding to become a reality. The Lifescape Project contributes legal expertise to the Large Herbivore Working Group and is currently pursuing pilot projects seeking legal change in the regulation of semi-wild horses and carcass management in the UK. 

Elsie contributed to “Rewilding: A Legal Perspective” in the Routledge Handbook of Rewilding (2023) and “The Case for Wolves in the UK” in “The Wolf: Culture, Nature, Heritage” (2023). In addition to her rewilding law practice, Elsie leads Lifescape’s legal team in bringing international strategic litigation to protect forest ecosystems and wild places.

Rina Quinlan - Rewilding consultant and researcher

Rina is a rewilding consultant and researcher specialising in species reintroductions and large herbivores. Since founding her consultancy in 2017, she has advised landowners, NGOs, statutory bodies, and conservation organisations on the development and delivery of nature recovery projects, advising on over 12,000 hectares of land.

Rina has provided guidance on herbivore ecology, species feasibility, management, and reintroduction planning. Recent work includes several feasibility studies on the reintroduction of Eurasian elk to large, fenced enclosures and large herbivore implementation plans for Forestry England’s Forest Wilding Programme, for which she is an advisory member of its Technical Advisory Group. She is a wildlife guide at Knepp Wildland and helps manage the Knepp Exmoor pony herds.

Rina is also the Founder and Steering Group member of the Large Herbivore Working Group, a collaborative network working to overcome barriers and advance large herbivore rewilding in Britain, hosted by the Wildlife Trusts. 

Alongside her broader work, she is undertaking a PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, researching the palaeoecology, management, and social considerations of reintroducing megaherbivores, such as Eurasian elk and European bison, to Britain.

Carolina Soto-Navarro - Head of Wilder Nature at Rewilding Europe

Carolina Soto-Navarro is the Head of Wilder Nature at Rewilding Europe. She brings huge experience to the role, having designed, led, and raised funds for public and private conservation initiatives across the world for the last 15 years.

Carolina’s passion for wildlife and wild places started in her childhood, as she grew up surrounded by nature in rural southern Spain. Following a PhD on Iberian lynx in Spain, she co-founded a visual media production company with a focus on environmental education, and then worked as the Director of International Development for an ecotourism company focused on wildlife photography. Following a move to the UK in 2013, she spent more than six years working with a range of conservation organisations, academic institutions, major foundations, and government agencies on wildlife conservation, and also at the biodiversity-policy interface.

With a strong desire to deliver on-the-ground conservation impact, Carolina moved to Southeast Asia in 2019, where she joined the Wildlife Practice at WWF-Vietnam. She also worked as the IUCN Saola Working Group National Coordinator for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. She played a leading role in defining and implementing conservation strategies focused on species such as elephants and primates in the Central Annamites, working with a wide variety of stakeholders.

Stan Smith - Head of Nature and Species Recovery at The Wildlife Trusts

Stan's career in nature recovery spans more than a decade starting with a practical grounding in nature reserve management backed by a degree in Zoology. As his career has progressed he has moved deeper into the field of natural process driven ecosystem restoration including leading the first reintroduction of European Bison to the UK. He now helps steer the return of large herbivores to our landscapes through the Large Herbivore Working Group and is working on coordinating efforts to return missing species for the Wildlife Trusts. He also leads the Wildlife Trusts’ groundbreaking temperate rainforest programme in partnership with Aviva thus seeking to link green finance mechanisms to large scale ecosystem restoration.

Rob Stoneman, Director of Landscape Recovery at The Wildlife Trusts

Rob started his career delving into the archive of peatlands, looking for signs of climate change through changes of sub-fossil fragments of Sphagnum moss. After his PhD studies, Rob moved into nature conservation as a Project Manager working on peatland restoration with the Scottish Wildlife Trust. From there, Rob took on CEO roles for three Wildlife Trusts – Sheffield, Hampshire & Isle of Wight and Yorkshire. After a two-year stint with Rewilding Europe, Rob returned to the Wildlife Trusts as Director of Landscape Recovery with a mission to step up the recovery of Wildlife in the UK and British islands and bring rewilding into the work of the Wildlife Trusts, not least by promoting the reintroduction of Britain’s keystone predator, herbivore and scavenger species.