Susan Haseltine, Ph.D. has been with the USGS for more than 10 years. Before joining the USGS, she was Eastern Region Director for the former National Biological Service (NBS), and she became Chief Scientist for Biology when the NBS joined the USGS in 1996.Prior to joining the NBS, she managed the Refuges and Wildlife program in the Upper Midwest in Minneapolis, Minn., for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) after serving as the Center Director for the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown, N. Dak. She joined the FWS as a researcher for the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., and worked for more than a decade as a researcher and research manager before moving onto the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center. Haseltine has a doctorate and master's in zoology from Ohio State University and a bachelor's in wildlife science from the University of Maine. For more information

Jay Inslee: Raised on the shores of Puget Sound, Jay Inslee comes from a long line of Washingtonians and wants to protect the state’s natural beauty for his three sons and generations to come.
He’s worked at the federal level – as representative for the 4th Congressional District from 1992-1994 and the 1st Congressional District since 1999 – to protect the environment of Washington state and address the problem of global warming.
He fought to restore protections for roadless areas in national forests and led a successful campaign in the House to keep limits on oil-tanker traffic in Puget Sound. Since 2005, Jay has used his seat on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee to promote his vision for a clean energy future, the New Apollo Energy Act, and to advance other legislation that would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. In March 2007, he was appointed to the 15-member Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
Beyond advocating sound environmental policies, Jay has used a common-sense approach in Congress to help expand the region’s high-tech economy, promote privacy protections for American consumers and strengthen programs for seniors like Social Security and Medicare.
Jay also has supported increased spending for port security and veterans’ services. He backed the war in Afghanistan to root out terrorists; but he voted against the war in Iraq and has been an outspoken critic of administration policies there.
Even before his election to the U.S. Congress, Jay was a public servant. He was a state legislator and prosecutor in Selah, Wash.
Jay holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Washington and earned his law degree from Willamette University. He’s been married to his high-school sweetheart, Trudi, since 1972. The couple has three grown children – Jack, Connor and Joe – who all live in Washington state.
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Dan Martin is a widely experienced international grant-maker, conservationist, non-profit executive, and educator.  Until July, 2007, he was Senior Managing Director of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), a grant-making program financed by the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the French foreign aid agency, the MacArthur Foundation, the Japanese government, and private donors to Conservation International, which is the managing partner.  CEPF makes grants to support nature conservation and sustainable economic development in the regions that contain the world’s highest levels of biological diversity, most of which are also centers of cultural diversity, profound poverty, high human fertility, high rates of mortality and morbidity, violent conflict, and institutional failure.  
He came to CEPF in 2004 from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in San Francisco, where he served as Chief Research Officer and Senior Director, Environment, leading the investigation of opportunities for impact in ocean science and marine conservation as well as developing an institutional research program during the start-up of this major new donor agency.
Martin joined the Moore Foundation in 2001 after serving for 15 years as founding Director of the World Environment and Resources Program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, which also concentrates its grants in the areas of the world’s highest biological diversity (primarily tropical forests and coral reefs).  This approach allowed MacArthur to focus its investments sharply, making choices driven by published data and long-term considerations rather than self-defined and changing preferences.  The MacArthur program supported the emergence of voluntary environmental organizations and the growth of national scientific capacity in many developing countries, reliance on environmental law, trans-national cooperation in natural resources management, and sustainability standards in the forest products industry.  He was also the founding Director of MacArthur’s Population and Reproductive Health Program, which works in Mexico, Nigeria, India and Brazil, first Director of its General Program, making grants for public broadcasting and independent video productions as well as human rights programs; and Director of an experimental program on U.S. Interests and Responsibilities, that supported improved domestic public understanding of climate change and globalization.  
Martin previously served as President of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation in New York, as President of the Cranbrook Educational Community (a complex of schools and museums in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan), and as President of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (a regional consortium of thirteen leading liberal arts colleges active in international education, based in Chicago).
Earlier, Martin was Executive Assistant at the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation in New York, which made grants in academic medicine, and Assistant to the Chancellor and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he taught classes in comparative politics and American political thought.  He also taught medical students at the Rush Medical School in Chicago about the financing and regulation of health care and medical research and served as a Visiting Professor of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, leading a seminar for graduate students on the global context of biodiversity conservation.
Martin was raised in a small town in eastern Iowa, where his father published a weekly newspaper and his mother was a fourth grade teacher.   He was educated at Knox College, graduating with a B.A. in political science and international relations, earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in international politics and political theory at Princeton University, and served as an Intelligence officer in the United States Army.
He is currently a Life Trustee of Knox College, a member of the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, the Board of Founders of the Costa Rica-USA Foundation, the Board of Trustees of the Phelps Stokes Fund, the Advisory Board of the National Geographic Conservation Trust, and the Advisory Council of the Princeton Environmental Institute.  He previously served as a Vice President and member of the governing Council of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, based in Switzerland, as a member of the Board of Governors of the International Development Research Centre in Canada, the Illinois Board of Regents, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the National Commission on the Financing of Post-secondary Education and many other public and non-profit boards and advisory committees in the United States and elsewhere. 
 In earlier years, he was active in Republican political campaigns and organizations at the local, state and Federal levels; he retired from Conservation International in 2007 to support the Presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama.
His work has taken Martin to many remote locations and to more than 100 countries in most regions of the world.  An avid traveler, SCUBA diver, railroad buff and map collector, he is uncomfortable discussing distant sites without an atlas, map or railroad timetable in hand.

Carl Safina works to bring ocean issues to widespread public visibility. In the 1990s he helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, re-write federal fisheries law in the U. S., work toward international conservation of tunas,
sharks, and other fishes, and achieve passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty. His writing now explores how the ocean is changing, and what those changes mean for wildlife and for people.
Safina, whose PhD in ecology from Rutgers University, is author of several books, and more than a hundred scientific and popular publications on ecology and oceans, including featured work in National Geographic and a new Foreword to Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean, was chosen a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction selection, and a Library Journal Best Science Book selection; it won him the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. His second book, Eye of the
Albatross, won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing and was chosen by the National Academies of Science,
Engineering and Medicine as the year’s best book for communicating science.Safina is also author of Voyage of the Turtle.
He has been profiled in the New York Times (twice) and on Nightline, named among “100 Notable Conservationists of the 20th Century” by Audubon magazine, and featured on the Bill Moyers PBS special “Earth on Edge.”
He has honorary doctorates from Long Island University and the State University of New York, and is adjunct
full professor at Stony Brook University. Safina is an elected member of The Explorers Club, a recipient of the Pew
Scholar's Award in Conservation and the Environment and a World Wildlife Fund Senior Fellowship, recipient of
Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo’s Rabb Medal, and winner of a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, among other honors.

 Rodger Schlickeisen, has been President of Defenders of Wildlife since 1991. Under his leadership, Defenders has grown from 62,000 members and activists to more than 1,000,000 and is recognized as one of the nation’s prominent conservation advocacy organizations.
Prior to joining Defenders, Rodger was CEO of Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company, a leading consulting firm for progressive advocacy organizations.  He also served in the Carter White House as Associate Director of the U.S. Office of Management & Budget, and as Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Max Baucus.
Rodger is also President of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, a political non-profit that works to elect a pro-conservation Congress and White House, and to advance conservation programs and policies. In addition, he is Vice Chairman of the Board of the national League of Conservation Voters. He was the founding chair of the nonprofit Partnership Project, established to help build a more unified and potent national environmental movement. He also serves on the advisory committees of the Earth Communications Organization and the Environmental Media Association.
Rodger Schlickeisen holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a doctorate in finance from George Washington University. He is the author of numerous published opinion pieces and articles, including an influential law review article on the need for a constitutional amendment to protect the natural environment for future generations.

Peter A. Seligmann co-founded Conservation International in 1987 and has been a leader in conservation efforts for the past 25 years.  During his stewardship, CI has earned a reputation as an organization on the cutting edge of conservation, creating innovative and lasting solutions to biodiversity and sustainable development problems.  He has developed strong conservation partnerships between CI and leaders in industry, science, government and entertainment, both in the United States and abroad.  He continues to prove that people can live in harmony with our natural surroundings. 
Under Seligmann’s leadership, CI has pioneered conservation tools that are economically sound, scientifically based and culturally sensitive.  CI has grown to be a major international conservation leader with field offices in 45 countries and major influences in science and business.
Mr. Seligmann serves on the advisory councils of the Jackson Hole Land Trust, Ecotrust and other not-for-profit organizations, including the Wild Salmon Center.  President Clinton named him a member of the Enterprise for the Americas Board in 2000.
He began his career in 1976 at The Nature Conservancy, serving as the organization’s western region land steward.  He later became Director of the California Nature Conservancy.  Mr. Seligmann has a Masters of Science in Forestry and Environmental Science from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Ecology from Rutgers University and an Honorary Doctorates in Science from Michigan State University and Rutgers University.

Dr. Claudia Sobrevila is currently Senior Biodiversity Specialist in the Environment Department at the World Bank. 
A Spanish national, she holds a degree in biology from the Central University of Venezuela, an M.A. and a doctorate (PhD) in Ecology from Harvard University and a post-doctorate from the Smithsonian Institution.  Under her current position, she leads analytical research & knowledge management initiatives on a variety of topics:  land tenure, protected areas and deforestation, indigenous people and biodiversity conservation, trust funds for protected areas and, infrastructure and biodiversity.  Since 1992, she has held several positions in the Latin America Region of the WB, providing technical and management expertise to more than 20 biodiversity and natural resources management projects in 15 countries in Latin America.  Dr. Sobrevila played a key role in establishing one of the first private biodiversity funds in Latin America, FUNBIO in Brazil.  She also was team leader during the design phase of a complex and ambitious project, the ARPA project in the Brazilian Amazon, one of the largest biodiversity conservation efforts in tropical countries.  ARPA is setting aside 28.5 million hectares of new protected areas in the Amazon. She has led numerous missions with donors from Germany, England, the European Union, and private donors. She is a strong practitioner of participatory development.  The wide input she seeks ensures stronger ownership of the decisions by an array of interest groups and may ensure more long-lasting effects in conservation. Dr. Sobrevila has led workshops to develop best practices on Amazon forest management in Santarem in 1995, on the issue of biodiversity funding mechanisms in Galapagos in 2000, on the role of indigenous peoples in biodiversity conservation in Peru in 2001, and more recently was in the design team of the international forum of indigenous peoples of Central Africa in Congo-Brazzaville in 2007.  Her current focus is to increase awareness among development agencies and governments of the importance of traditional knowledge and indigenous groups in sustainable development.  Dr. Sobrevila has given key note speeches on this topic at several conferences: Business and Biodiversity, New York (2008), Xiang Dialogue in China (2007), Clima Latino Conference in Quito (2007) 
Prior to her position at the Bank, Dr. Sobrevila was Chief Ecologist at The Nature Conservancy, where she lead inventories of vegetation types and park planning in more than 8 countries and developed a Manual for Rapid Ecological Assessment that is being used commonly in Latin America.  She was also Senior Director for the Andean Countries at Conservation International, where she promoted the concept and development of ecological corridors, particularly in the Peru-Bolivia Amazon Lowlands, which has become a major conservation strategy in these two countries. 
Dr. Sobrevila has authored several  papers and reports on rapid ecological assessment, ecological guide to a park, conservation planning tools, biodiversity conservation and more recently on the role of Nature and Peace.  Her latest publication: “The role of indigenous peoples in biodiversity conservation: the natural but often forgotten partners” was released in Bonn in 2008 during the COP 9 of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

William Sutherland: I want to change global conservation practice. We are rarely learning from the experience of practitioners. We are repeatedly making the same mistakes around the world. Published research has too little influence on practice. We are insufficiently prepared for future issues (as seen by the chaos over biofuels). Policy makers find too little of the science relevant. Conservationists in less affluent countries are too constrained by lack of access to books.
My attempts to solve these problems are to establish and promote the practice of evidence-based conservation (especially through the website Conservationevidence.com), establish environmental horizon scanning as a standard practice, bring global conservation practitioners together to agree to research questions of highest priority and establish the Gratis book scheme, which has sent 5,200 books to 152 countries.
I am the Miriam Rothschild Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Cambridge. My erratic research interests include looking at the impact of GM crops, human disturbance, agricultural change, climate change and the fate of languages. I wrote The Conservation Handbook and the snappily titled From Individual Behaviour to Population Biology. I edited Managing Habitats for Conservation, Ecological Census Techniques, Behaviour and Conservation, Conservation Science and Action and Bird Ecology and Conservation: a Handbook of Techniques. All of these make ideal Christmas presents.

John Wiens grew up in Oklahoma as an avid birdwatcher. Following degrees from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.S., Ph.D.), he joined the faculty of Oregon State University and, subsequently, the University of New Mexico and Colorado State University, where he was a Professor of Ecology and University Distinguished Professor. His work has emphasized landscape ecology and the ecology of birds, leading to over 200 scientific papers and 7 books.
John left academia in 2002 to join The Nature Conservancy as Lead Scientist, with the challenge of putting years of classroom teaching and research into conservation practice in the real world. In 2008, he joined PRBO Conservation Science as Chief Conservation Science Officer. His aim is to build on the long-standing work of PRBO on bird populations to address conservation in a rapidly changing world – “conservation futures.” Climate change is affecting species distributions, economic globalization is altering land uses, and demands for the goods and services provided by nature are changing how people relate to nature. John is working with PRBO staff and partners to develop guidance for assessing the impacts of these changes and how management practices can help natural systems adapt.