Founder & Managing Director
Biosphere Expeditions was founded in 1999 by Dr. Matthias Hammer. Born in Germany, he went to school there, before joining the Army at 18, and serving for several years amongst other units with the German Parachute Regiment. After active service he came to the UK and was educated at St Andrews, Oxford and Cambridge. During his time at university he either organised or was involved in the running of several expeditions, some of which were conservation expeditions (for example to the Brazil Amazon and Madagascar), whilst others were mountaineering/climbing expeditions (for example to the Russian Caucasus, the Alps or the Rocky Mountains). With Biosphere Expeditions he has led teams all over the globe. He is a qualified wilderness medical officer, ski instructor, mountain leader, divemaster and survival skills instructor. Once a rower on the international circuit, he is now an amateur marathon runner and Ironman triathlete.
Director
Kathy Wilden joined Biosphere Expeditions in 2000. She was born and educated in England. Since gaining her BA in Business at Bristol, she has worked in sustainable development and regeneration for a variety of public sector organisations, most recently the Regional Development Agency for the East of England where she was responsible for developing and supporting partnership working to establish sustainable development activities. At the main office Kathy is also one of two Directors and is in charge of the UK organisation. She has travelled extensively, led expeditions and recceed projects all over the world. She is a qualified off-road driver, divemaster, marathon runner, keen walker, sailor, diver and all round nature enthusiast.
HQ Office Manager
Kate Curnow was born and educated in Australia. She attended Melbourne and Swinburne Universities. Her work and family commitments have taken her around the globe, with much time spent living in Hong Kong, England and Canada. She is a qualified teacher, nurse and open water diver. She loves hiking & cycling. Since 2007 Kate has been involved in Biosphere Expeditions, either as team member or assisting with research and setting up expeditions. She now runs the HQ office.
Operations Manager Germany
Malika Fettak is half Algerian, but was born and educated in Germany.
She majored in Marketing & Communication at the University of
Frankfurt, which led her to jobs in PR & Communications. She has
travelled widely, especially in Africa and Northern Europe. Her love of
nature and the outdoors, and taking part in a few Biosphere
expeditions, persuaded her that a change of career was in order and
here she is since 2008, leading expeditions and desperately trying to
make herself useful around the office :) Malika is a keen sportswoman -
triathlon, skiing, volleyball, etc.and enjoys the outdoors.
Operations Manager North America
Roseann Hanson has worked around the globe for more than 25 years as a guide, journalist and conservation programme director. Her diverse work has taken her from the deep backcountry of Mexico's Sierra Madre to Ethiopia's Omo Valley, and from Arctic Canada to the plains of the Serengeti. Whether leading birdwatching tours or teaching wildlife tracking for conservation groups, she enjoys integrating conservation, science, outdoor skills, and cultural awareness into her work. She is an Open Water diver, Tread Lightly Trainer, certified in the Royal Geographical Society's Land Rover Driver Training programme, and an instructor for Overland Training in the US. In her conservation work, she serves on the Arizona Game and Fish Department Heritage Fund advisory board, volunteers for Sky Island Alliance, and advises African Conservation Fund and Whistling Thorn conservation camp in Tanzania. Roseann and her husband Jonathan are authors of numerous award-winning natural history and outdoor travel books, and they are building an off-the-grid solar home in a remote corner of the the Sonoran Desert southwest of Tucson, Arizona.
Operations Manager Australia
Sarah Low was born in Australia and educated at Monash University and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland where she studied languages. Her love of the outdoors has taken her to Eastern and Southern Africa on several occasions as well as the Seychelles and Fraser Island, Queensland. She holds a dive certificate and is a keen downhill skier. When Sarah joined Biosphere Expeditions in 2007, it fulfilled a long-standing desire to get involved and make a contribution to the conservation of endangered wildlife species around the globe.
Operations Assistant
Aino Försti-Smith was born and educated in Finland. She majored in German language and culture at the University of Turku where she also studied communications, government, and political history. Her interest in languages and different cultures led her to work in PR and Communications within the international arena for several years. Growing up in her native Finland taught her to appreciate wildlife and nature from an early age, and she loves exploring the wonders of the world. She enjoys outdoor activities such as walking, cycling, swimming and winter sports. Aino lives in England and joined Biosphere Expeditions in 2009.
Operations Assistant France
Pascal Tchengang was born in Paris, but his roots go back to Guadeloupe and Cameroon. He is a business school graduate, living and working in Paris, and he has travelled extensively all around the world. He first discovered Biosphere Expeditions on a French TV documentary and went on expedition to Namibia. In the Paris agency Pascal is in charge of communication and administration, but he also joins expeditions in the field whenever his time allows.
Resident Biologist Namibia
Kristina Killian was born in Germany and studied biology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her main research interests are the ecology and behaviour of mammals and their conservation. Amongst other things, she has investigated zebra herd behaviour, red deer and whale acoustics and the endangered Darwin Fox on Chiloé, Chile. She has travelled and worked in Spain, Australia, Argentina and Namibia. Her other big passion is horses and she has worked in a professional equestrian centre and has travelled as a horse groom around Europe. In Namibia Kristina is in charge of running and developing all Biosphere Expeditions projects in that country.
President of the "Friends of Biosphere Expeditions"
Martyn Roberts is the President of the "Friends", a society for those who would like to stay in touch with Biosphere Expeditions and involved in our work. Martyn is a seasoned expeditioner (he has been on expedition to the Altai, Namibia, Slovakia, Sri Lanka and the Azores) and a critical friend.
Expedition leader
Peter Schuette was born in Germany. He studied geography and cartography at the University Bremen (Germany) and Göteborg universitet (Sweden) and geoinformatics in Salzburg (Austria). He has worked in several mapping and remote sensing projects all over the world. In 2004 and 2005 Peter was involved in wildlife conservation projects in Namibia, where he joined Biosphere Expeditions as member of the team of local scientists and was promptly bitten by the wildlife expeditions bug. He has travelled in Scandinavia, Iceland, Southern Africa, North America and Central Asia.Peter holds First Aid and Off-Road driving certificates and has been to Namibia, Altai and Oman for Biosphere Expeditions.
Expedition leader
Leslie Ruyle was born and raised in Colorado, United States. She attended Montana State University-Northern on an athletic scholarship, playing both volleyball and basketball, and graduated with a degree in Ecology. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, West Africa helping build the foundation for a community-based conservation project, the Wechiau Community Hippo Sanctuary, now recognised with several global conservation awards. She is currently completing her PhD in Ecology at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia, focusing on conservation of endangered species. Her conservation interests and work has taken her around the world including projects with crocodiles in Botswana, sun bears in Malaysia, and jaguars in Brazil. She has experience in leading several expedition groups as well as being a participant. She has lived in four countries and travelled to over 45, plus 49 of the 50 US states. Leslie joined Biosphere Expeditions in 2008.
Expedition leader
Andy Stronach was born in Scotland, studied Engineering and then flew aircraft for the Royal Air Force before working in wildlife. Surveys of wild plants, birds and marine mammals led him into anti-wildlife crime work that has become his passion and taken him all over Britain and Cyprus. He has taken part in expeditions to Belize, Honduras and Sulawesi, surveying coral reefs and rainforest. Due to a rare allergy to offices, Andrew is almost always found outdoors, whether it is working in the highlands of Scotland, trekking in some remote national park on one of his many foreign travels or dangling from a rope on a rock face.
Expedition Leader
Ronald Seipold graduated from the University of Berlin with a Masters Degree in Business Administration and then spent several years working in different branches of industries leading organisational and IT related projects. He then decided to go for a total change of career & lifestyle and focus on his passion for travelling, wildlife and the outdoors. After a 100 day intensive training course with COLT (Canadian Outdoor Leader Training) he qualified as an outdoor leader, radio operator, sea kayak and canoeing guide, backcountry first-aider, etc.. Ronald then began leading and instructing groups in the outdoors primarily in Scandinavia and Canada as well as working for outdoor camps and lodges. Ronald joined Biosphere Expeditions in 2007. His favourite activities are mountaineering, canoeing and climbing.
Expedition Leader
Paul Franklin was born in Oxford and studied zoology at Swansea University. His Masters Degree was based on research of the migratory behaviour and ecology of amphibians. After graduation Paul spent a year working as a naturalist guide in the Peruvian Amazon. There, among other things, he was bitten by the travel bug. Since then he has led many expeditions and treks to far flung corners of the globe. Travels overseas have been interspersed with time spent in the UK working, among other things, as a Nature Reserve Warden and Environmental Consultant. Never far from a camera, many of his wildlife and travel images have been published in magazines and books. When not travelling on foot through the world's wild places his preferred modes of transport are a kayak, mountain bike or occasionally a horse.
Expedition Leader
David Moore was born and educated in England and now lives in the UK
and France. He graduated in French and German and studied Japanese
while working for two years in Tokyo. His expedition/group leading
experience began with Japanese educational trips in Australia and he
has since worked in the Caribbean and throughout Europe for companies
such as P&O, Explorica and Alyson Adventures. David joined
Biosphere Expeditions in 2003 and has led expeditions to the Azores,
Namibia, Peru and Brazil. He is also active in the running of Biosphere
Expeditions operations in France together with Pascal Tchengang.
Expedition leader
Pere Morera was born in Barcelona and educated in Spain and the United
States. He graduated in animal biology and physiology, and then focused
his postgraduate studies on marine mammals, specialising in cetaceans.
Since leaving his native Catalonia a few years ago, Pere has developed
his career as a wildlife biologist and naturalist in several countries
including northern Norway, Iceland, Canada and Sweden, combining his
passion for the animal world and outdoor activities. As a freelance
writer and photographer his work has been published in magazines such
as National Geographic. Pere joined Biosphere Expeditions in 2004 as
part of the scientists team on the Azores expedition, and since then
has been to Peru and the Azores for Biosphere Expeditions.
Trainee Expedition Leader
Born and raised in England, John Highmore studied English Literature at Sheffield University in the UK and at the University of Maryland, USA. He then spent three years working as an English teacher in the little town of Owase in Japan, where he became fluent in conversational Japanese. John returned to the UK in 1998 to complete a college course in outdoor activities instruction, and he has since gone on to work in many different areas of the outdoors industry. As a freelance instructor, he has been lucky enough to live and work in several beautiful and remote places, such as Tallangatta Valley in Australia, the Isle of Raasay in the Scottish Hebrides, San Agostino in Greece, and in the Musandam region of Oman. His first expedition experience was in Namibia, and he has subsequently led expedition teams to Costa Rica, India, Vietnam, Morocco and Venezuela. He also spent a year as a crew member on the tall ship HM Bark Endeavour, on which he sailed around Cape Horn. Then, in 2006, he was part of a team which made an historic journey with a group of Clydesdales and shire horses, from the Highlands of Scotland to the English Lake District. John currently lives in Dubai and divides his time between expedition leading and working in a second-hand bookshop.
Trainee Expedition Leader
Wren McLean was born in Australia and grew up breeding reptiles and caring for other orphaned and injured wildlife. She is an environmental science graduate and has participated in many wildlife research projects including Australian gliding possums, marine turtles, marsupial moles, humpback whales, migratory wader birds and seabirds. She has a strong dedication to environmental justice and worked on numerous campaigns and expeditions to protect biodiversity and natural resources. Wren is also a yoga teacher and artist who loves long distance swimming and kayaking.
Honduras: Italo Bonilla (left) recently appeared with Cameron Diaz on MTV, so he is now a well-known movie star 
. He is also a biologist, PADI dive instructor and Emergency First Response instructor. He has worked for the United States Geological Survey and within several reef survey methodologies, amongst them Reef Check and on many expeditions in Belize and Honduras.
Slovakia: Robin Rigg is a UK-born zoologist who has lived in Slovakia since 1996. He has a Bachelors degree in natural science from Cambridge University and in 2005 gained a Masters with distinction in zoology from the University of Aberdeen for a thesis on “The extent of predation on livestock by large carnivores in Slovakia and mitigating carnivore-human conflict using livestock guarding dogs”. The main focus of his work is on the long-term conservation of large carnivores through improving coexistence and reducing conflicts with local people. He has set up and led several innovative projects in his adopted country, including the Protection of Livestock and Conservation of Large Carnivores, Bear Education, Awareness and Research in Slovakia and the Slovakia Wolf Census Project. He is the chairman of the Slovak Wildlife Society, which he established in 1998.
Brazil: Dr. Marcelo Mazzolli was born in Brazil and graduated in Biology in 1992, with a master’s degree from the University of Durham, UK. His Ph.D. in ecology, obtained in Brazil, was on the effects of human occupation on the extinction of large mammals. He has devoted his career to the study of large mammals, particularly the puma and jaguar, but has had many other outdoors experiences. He was a professional jungle guide in the Amazon forest in 1986 at age 21. He has attended many national and international workshops, and published relevant articles. His studies have made his work well known, and early in his career he was invited to be a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Cat Specialist Group with one of his projects listed as a priority in the World Wide Cat Action Plan. He has travelled extensively, living in the United States and Peru, and has surveyed lions in Botswana.
Oman: Dr. Andrew Spalton came to Oman in 1987 to work on the reintroduction of the Arabian oryx. After six years at the project field headquarters in central Oman he left for Aberdeen (Scotland) to complete his PhD on the ecology of the oryx. Returning to Oman in 1995, Andrew took up a new post in Muscat. While continuing to help oversee the oryx project, he undertook new work with the Arabian leopard and Arabian tahr. He set up the Arabian Leopard Survey which collected the first information on the ecology of the highly endangered Arabian leopards.
Azores: Lisa Steiner graduated in Marine Science in 1988 at University of Miami and joined the IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) cetacean research vessel “Song of the Whale” two weeks later, which at the time was based in the Azores. Since then Lisa has spent all her summers working on cetaceans around the Azores and at other times has also studied them in Alabama, Hawaii, Cape Verdes, Bermuda, Scotland and Madeira. She has published numerous research papers on cetaceans. Chris Beer, Lisa’s husband, is a marine engineer and qualified yachtmaster. He has worked on square rig ships with Operation Raleigh (now Raleigh International) and on the “Song of the Whale”, where he met Lisa. Chris has also worked for Encounter Overland, leading expeditions from London to Kathmandu and back, around India, Tibet and the Middle East. He has also published research papers together with Lisa.
Altai: Volodya Tytar was born in 1951 and his Master’s Degree in Biology is from Kiev State University. At that time he first experienced the Altai mountains and wrote a paper on the ecology of the brown bear in the Altai. He then pursued a career as an invertebrate zoologist before shifting towards large mammals and management planning for nature conservation. Apart from the Altai, he has worked with Biosphere Expeditions on wolves, vipers and jerboas on the Ukraine Black Sea coast and has been involved in surveying and conservation measures all his professional life.
Namibia: Ulf Tubbesing is the owners of the Ongos study site and farm and oversees the study design and local involvement. Ulf, Namibian by birth, graduated in veterinary science from the Onderstepoort Veterinary Faculty, Pretoria, South Africa in 1983. After a year in private practice he returned to Onderstepoort where he lectured in small animal medicine for nine years. In 1994 he returned to Namibia and has since then been involved in private practice with small animal and wildlife medicine and surgery as focal points. In 2004 Ulf and a business associate bought the farm Ongos (previously a cattle ranch), which has since been rehabilitated into a well stocked game ranch. Ulf is also heavily involved in game capture and translocation operations. Ulf still has close ties with the academic staff at the University of Pretoria and frequently lectures to the nature conservation students of the local Technical College (Polytechnic of Namibia) as well as Namibian farmers.
Musandam: Rita Bento was born in Portugal. She has a degree in Marine Biology from the University of the Azores and a Masters in Marine Resources from Porto University. Her first area of research was bioacoustics of baleen whales, working in the USA with Oregon State University and NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration). In the last few years she has focussed her research on Marine Protected Areas (MPA) currently working with the Emirates Diving Association on the management plan of Dibba MPA in the UAE. Rita is also a Reef Check instructor with hundreds of Reef Check dives. Besides her scientific career, she is also a CMAS diving instructor and published the first Portuguese diving guide in 2007.
Peru: Alan Lee is a graduate of Manchester Metropolitan University. His undergraduate studies in biology were conducted in South Africa, where he grew up. After working as a game ranger for one of South Africa’s most exclusive lodges, Mala Mala, he moved to England for a change in career direction and for travel opportunities, that to date have taken him to every continent except Antarctica. He first came to Peru in 2002 where he worked as a guide at Explorer’s Inn, and then joined the Tambopata Macaw Project. From 2003-2004 he supervised teams of volunteers on a project looking at the impacts of tourism on large mammal wildlife. In 2005 he was scientific adviser for the Biosphere Expedition to Las Piedras. During 2006 as part of his ongoing research into the impact of clay licks on parrot abundance, he was project manager for the Tambopata Macaw Project at Posada Amazonas and Refugio Amazonas.
Western Australia: Glenn McFarlane has more than seven years experience working hands-on with sea turtles in Central America and Australia. Glenn moved to Costa Rica in 2004 with the aim of building the first secure turtle hatchery at Cahuita National Park. This achieved, along with a vastly reduced local poaching rate of eggs and turtles plus years of gained experience at many projects, he returned home to Australia to continue working on establishing sea turtle conservation and research projects. Glenn has led more than 500 turtle patrols, walked over 6,000 km and handled more than 37,000 eggs in his efforts for turtle conservation.
Biosphere Expeditions started in 1999 as one of those famous "in the shower" ideas. Our founder, Matthias Hammer, with an Army background behind him, some student expeditions under his belt and disillusioned with the ivory tower mentality of academia, was looking for a way to combine his training as a biologist with some real-life, hands-on conservation work. When someone suggested "why don't you take people on expedition with you", the idea for Biosphere Expeditions was born in the shower one day soon after.
It took a year to set up Biosphere Expeditions as a non-profit orgnisation in the UK and another year to recruit the first expedition team. The first expedition ran in 2001 to Poland, studied wolves of the Carpathian mountains and was instrumental in establishing a wolf hunting ban there. Demand was high and many expeditioners, once bitten by the bug, came back for more, so the expedition portfolio quickly increased to include Peru and Namibia, two expeditions still running today.
More expeditions were added, the Friends of Biosphere Expeditions came into being, corporate partners were found, awards won, and the media took a great interest in Biosphere Expeditions. The German office opened in 2002, followed by France in 2004 and North America in 2006.
In 2007 this revamped website was launched and Biosphere Expeditions diversified to offer 2-week expeditions and 1-week projects across the globe, as well as taster weekends in the UK and Germany.
And recently all this was rewarded in style by winning the "Best Volunteering Orangisation" award at the internationally acclaimed "First Choice Responsible Tourism Awards" in London and coming in "Highly Commended" in the "Best for Protection of Endangered Species". To date Biosphere Expeditions has sent thousands of people into the field and continues to grow. We are proud to send people from all over the world on expeditions across the globe, making a small but significant contribution to conserving our biosphere.
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