Beyond Biodiversity Monitoring: Measuring Conservation Impact and Informing Decisions ft. Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez

Please join the Gund Institute for a special talk by MacMillan Visiting Scholar Dr. Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez.

About the talk: Despite significant advances in biodiversity monitoring and our ability to analyze large-scale ecological data, determining whether conservation efforts are delivering measurable outcomes for nature remains a major challenge. Moving beyond documenting biodiversity patterns and trends requires generating credible evidence that can directly inform conservation decisions and evaluate the impact of investments in nature. In this talk, Ruiz-Gutierrez will present examples of how her team has used biodiversity monitoring data to inform policy, guide investments in regenerative agriculture, and begin to assess their outcomes. Drawing lessons from this work, she will also discuss the benefits and challenges of working with partners outside academia to translate scientific findings into action that can improve biodiversity outcomes at scale.

About the speaker: Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez is the Assistant Director at the Center for Avian Population Studies and the Program Leader of Conservation Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She is also the founder and Associate Director of the Coastal Solutions Fellows Program. Viviana earned her B.Sc. in Tropical Biology from the National University of Costa Rica, her Ph.D. from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, and spent several years as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. Viviana has spent most of her career supporting and developing projects related to bird research and conservation in Latin America, including the development and application of novel statistical models to study the impacts of land-use changes on bird populations. She is specifically active in capacity building efforts, and in the past decade, she has taught courses on the design and analysis of wildlife monitoring programs to over 150 students from 14 countries. She is an elected member of the AOU council, on the Board of the Neotropical Ornithological Society, and Co-Chair of the NABCI Monitoring Subcommittee.