Prof Bill Sutherland

William (Bill) Sutherland is founder of Conservation Evidence at Cambridge University. An academic obsessed by improving the practice of conservation through the collation of evidence, through using AI and through working with global practitioners. His big idea is that we should do fewer of the actions we know don’t work and more of those we know do. He has somehow become a YouTuber (Bill Sutherland’s Conservation Concepts). 

Chloë India Wright

Chloë is the Evidence Emergency Project Manager, on secondment to RSWT from Surrey Wildlife Trust. She has led the project through its “grow” phase, which saw the launch of the Evidence Centre of Excellence and the Evidence Advocates Network. She has a portfolio career in research and communication across the non-profit, academic, and public sectors, including extensive behavioural, ecological, and experimental fieldwork. She expects to submit her PhD thesis on social competence in wild capuchin monkeys to the University of Lincoln this year. She is passionate about knowledge-sharing and making evidence accessible to maximise its impact for wildlife. 

Catherine Payne

Catherine is a wildlife conservationist who is passionate about using the Conservation Standards and adaptive management principles to enable individuals, teams, and organisations to deliver more effective conservation. In 2022, Catherine established Alcedo Conservation, which specialises in providing high-quality, accessible, and engaging training programmes, complemented by tailored coaching for small conservation organisations around the world. 

In the past four years, we have trained more than 600 participants from close to 80 countries through our flagship course, Getting Started with the Conservation Standards, offered in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Catherine loves to share her enthusiasm with a wide audience, especially introducing new people to the benefits of managing conservation projects adaptively. Born and raised in Tasmania, Catherine is now based in Bath, United Kingdom. 

Alison Ruyter

Alison is Kent Wildlife Trusts Wilder Grazing Lead. Alison has 25 years’ experience of grazing in conservation settings. Since 2019 she has led Kent Wildlife trust’s Wilder Grazing programme, co-ordinating over 900 animals of 18 different breeds and species to deliver a proxy for missing ecosystem functions, across all habitat types. Some of the work is experimental, based on emerging theories and ground-based observations. The team also develops thinking on related topics such as welfare, community engagement, evidencing, ecosystem functions, and herd dynamics.   

Craig Bennett 

Craig is Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, Honorary Professor of Sustainability and Innovation at Alliance Manchester Business School, an Associate Fellow of Homerton College (Cambridge), and a Fellow of The Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is also a Commissioner on the UK Government’s Clean Power 2030 Advisory Commission. He was awarded an OBE for services to the environment in the King’s New Year 2026 Honour’s List.

He has been described as “one of the country’s top environmental campaigners”, by The Guardian as “the very model of a modern eco-general” and has also been listed in The Sunday Times Green Power List of the UK’s top 20 environmentalists. Craig was formerly CEO of Friends of the Earth where he led the organisation to numerous campaign victories including on bees, fracking and against airport expansion.

Earlier in his career, Craig was Deputy Director at The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), and Director of The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change (from 2007 to 2010).

Craig has twenty-five years experience of designing and contributing to Executive Education and Leadership programmes at numerous universities and business schools around the world, and of providing advice and constructive challenge direct to CEOs and company boards. He is currently Chair of the Independent Challenge Group for Anglian Water.

He is also a Policy Fellow of The Centre for Science and Policy and a member of the Churchill Sustainability Practitioners Network at The University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking, a judge on The Wainwright Book Prize, a Trustee of the think-tank Green Alliance, and an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM). He regularly appears in the print and broadcast media.

He has a BSc (Hons) in Human and Physical Geography from The University of Reading and an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation from University College London, and Honorary Doctoral degrees from University College of Estate Management (UCEM), and Anglian Ruskin University (ARU).