REWILDING UPDATES

Raquel Filgueiras

Head of Rewilding

Raquel Filgueiras was born in 1972 in a small coastal village in northern Portugal. Like many other Portuguese, the ocean and her curiosity lead her to a career that now spans three continents and numerous countries.

Having started on the plains of southern Portugal, she quickly switched her attention to Africa, moving there to help the IUCN develop a tourism plan for the Parque Nacional do Rio Cacheu in Guinea-Bissau. Forced to leave the country by civil war, she eventually joined The Nature Conservancy in the eastern Caribbean, where she led the Grenadines Parks in Peril programme, setting up a network of marine protected areas between Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The call of Africa was still strong, however. After a decade away, she returned, this time to Mozambique to work with communities living around Gorongosa National Park, one of the first privately run protected areas in Africa.

Raquel believes strongly in the innovative power of the private sector as a force that can bring about positive change. This is why, in 2010, she joined the African Parks Network to manage Liuwa Plain National Park, a remote, seasonally flooded grassland plain in western Zambia where wilderness can be experienced first hand.

More recently, Raquel joined WWF in Zambia, where she led the Freshwater Programme. For the past five years, her team has worked to maintain the connectivity of the Zambezi basin, setting up water resource protection areas and protecting the natural flow of some of the region’s largest rivers.

Raquel is driven by a desire to create space for nature, and a strong belief that  humans benefit greatly when they connect with that nature. One of her favourite pastimes is to grab a backpack and disappear into nature, an activity she has been fortunate enough to enjoy in some of our planet’s wildest places.

Laurien Holtjer

Head of Communications

Laurien is an experienced communications professional within the field of nature conservation. In 2005, she graduated with an MSc in Tropical Nature Conservation from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Following an ecological field study in South Africa, she decided to specialise in the field of communications, a move which would enable her to inspire audiences and connect people with wild nature. She ended her MSc with a biodiversity project in Kyrgyzstan, where she worked with local stakeholders to encourage their involvement in nature conservation.

After finishing her MSc studies, Laurien continued her education in the fields of journalism, online communications and marketing. After working as a journalist, she  became team leader and communications manager at Sovon, the Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology. While working at Sovon she was responsible for leading and developing strategies and projects, as well as producing content. During this time Laurien also worked periodically as an overseas dive instructor, helping people to explore the beauty and diversity of our underwater world.

Inspiring and connecting people with nature has always motivated Laurien. Joining Rewilding Europe fulfils her personal desire to work towards wilder nature, and a wish to make more people aware of nature’s beauty and innate resilience.

Laurien is a committed, all-round professional with an “onwards and upwards” approach to her career and life. In her present role she is responsible for the development and implementation of Rewilding Europe’s communications and marketing strategies and operations, both at a central level and across our rewilding areas. In partnership with regional communications officers, she works to share the efforts and results from these areas and boost our already significant communications impact and outreach.

Rob Stoneman

Regional Manager

Rob started his conservation career reconstructing climate change over the last few thousand years from records contained within peat bogs. After completing his PhD – and horrified by the destruction of precious peatland systems – he worked for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, running a European LIFE project to develop a conservation strategy for Scotland’s lowland raised bog. From this point onwards Rob operated at the heart of The Wildlife Trusts partnership, as Chief Executive of the Sheffield, Hampshire and Isle of Wight trusts, and latterly at the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, as a well as a stint as Director of Conservation.

Rob’s 26-year career with The Wildlife Trusts spanned all conservation disciplines – marine, river, upland, grassland, heathland, woodland and urban wildlife conservation. He has always maintained a deep interest in peatland conservation, travelling the globe to research and provide advice. In 2009 Rob set up the IUCN-UK Peatland Programme, which has spearheaded the restoration of Britain’s peatlands.

Rob has travelled extensively and loves to watch birds, go walking and cycling in wild countryside, and meet different people. He holds a passionate belief that a wilder Europe would allow us to resolve some of our most pressing issues – from climate change to ecosystem collapse – and create a new prosperity for a rapidly changing continent. Rob started at Rewilding Europe on May 1, 2019 with huge enthusiasm to scale up rewilding in northern and central Europe, and working closely with Deli Saavedra in southern Europe.

Iris de Winter

Major Donor Relations

Iris de Winter has always been interested in nature. After her Master’s Degree in Biology (Wageningen University, the Netherlands), she finished her doctoral research on the consequences of anthropogenic habitat changes for the health of lemurs and published multiple scientific articles on this subject. Meanwhile, Iris was chair of the student staff council of the university and incubation manager, supporting start-up companies who were working on sustainable solutions.

She currently coordinates the course Wildlife Conservation at Utrecht University, is primate-expert and research coordinator in a conservation project on blue-eyed black lemurs for Apenheul, has been organising student conservation excursions in southern Africa over the last nine years, and is hiking guide in mountainous areas throughout Europe and tour leader of (conservation) tours for several travel agencies. She completed an intensive tour guide training program in which safety during travel, orientation, Basic Life Support and respect for culture and the environment were central.

Iris has a drive to apply science-based conservation to contribute to the preservation of threatened natural areas and species. Therefore, she has recently become chair of the ‘Manga Maso’ foundation that incorporates the need for forest protection and reforestation combined with alternative livelihood development in the remaining forests of Madagascar. In her spare time, she has a keen interest in horse-riding and hiking in nature, many forms of dancing (including ballroom), swimming, and diving.

Driven by her enthusiasm to share her expertise and passion for nature and traveling, Iris has become a member of the Rewilding Europe team as of November 2018. Together with Jan Hein, she is responsible for the major donor relations. She is leading the associated fieldtrips to the diverse Rewilding Europe initiatives and will ensure a great experience for donors whilst exploring the rewilding areas.

Andrea Frey

Advisor Fundraising

Andrea is currently Director of International Growth for the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) – an organization whose goal is to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks trading in wildlife. In this role she was able to strengthen key external relationships and develop strategic current and new donor audiences (among them Oak Foundation, Vulcan Foundation, Wildcat, Adessium). She was also able to initiate new partnerships with major stakeholders (Airbus, Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS), Europol, European Union, German Development Agency (GiZ)).

Before that Andrea set up and managed the Minara Nature Foundation (MNF), a family foundation with an interest in wildlife conservation in East Africa. In this role, Andrea interacted with major decision makers in the Wildlife sector in Kenya and developed relations with key stakeholders (UNODC, KWS, Mara Conservancy). She also worked on an assignment to assess the “high reward, low impact” tourism approach and engaged with stakeholders in this space (Angama, Chem Chem, Selous Safari Camp).

Previously, Andrea spent nine years at the Oak Foundation as Head of the Special Interest (SI) Program. She managed a diverse portfolio with over 100 projects; developed strategies and organizational capacity, budgets, internal and external communication tools for the SI Program; increased the annual budget volume of SI grants from USD 10 million to USD 50 million, expanded the SI team from a single person structure to a six-people team; contributed to the development of the operational strategy of Oak as part of the Oak leadership team.

She also developed the five-year strategy for Oak’s Wildlife Trade Program (WTP) – building public-private partnerships, linking Southern and Eastern Africa to China and Southeast Asia to disrupt the illegal trade in wildlife. She organized the first Oak convening bringing key players in the illegal wildlife trafficking and conservation sector together building a donor group to support efforts.

Prior to joining the Oak Foundation, she worked as the campaign coordinator for the Israel section of Amnesty International leading one of the most successful Turkey campaigns (No Security without Human Rights 1996) worldwide. Andrea also led political campaigns in Switzerland and was a Program Manager for major international development assignments (Swiss Development Agency, UN).

Andrea is Swiss and is fluent in German, Swiss German, English and French. She holds an MA in War Studies from King’s College, London.