Headstarting is a collaborative effort between WWT, BirdsRussia and the RSPB, and occurs as part of the International Arctic Expedition mounted each year by BirdsRussia under the leadership of Dr. Evgeny Syroechkovskiy.

Graeme Buchanan

Graeme has worked at the RSPB for 15 years, and has input to spoon-billed sandpiper work since 2009. He is happiest outside in the field but his job, using remote sensing and GIS data, sees him tied to a computer in an office most of the time. He has undertaken spoon-billed sandpiper
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Nicola Crockford

Nicola has worked for the RSPB since 1992, leading BirdLife’s global flyways policy work since 1998, including as BirdLife focal point for the Convention on Migratory Species. She has been devoted to shorebirds for the past 40 years, especially those that depend on coastal habit
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Rhys Green

Rhys has worked on the science needed to conserve bird populations more effectively for 40 years, mostly at the RSPB and the University of Cambridge, UK. He studies the likely effects of conservation actions on the wild population of spoon-billed sandpipers, ways to make more accurate
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Rebecca Lee

Rebecca is a Senior Species Conservation Officer at WWT and a member of the Conservation Breeding team. Her background is in wildlife disease, aviculture and re-introduction policy and she’s got a thing for flamingos. Rebecca is the chair of the Wetlands International/IUCN-SSC Flaming
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Ian Fisher

Ian has worked at the RSPB for over 24 years, with his current focus on project management within the International Species Recovery Unit. While others are experts in the field, Ian spends most of his time behind a computer, managing budgets, applying for supporting funds, and dealing
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Debbie Pain

Debbie has worked at WWT as director of conservation for the last 9 years and spent the previous 15 years at RSPB running their international research unit. Debbie has worked on a range of conservation issues including: bird conservation and agricultural policy; climate change, bird d
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Baz Hughes

Baz has worked at WWT for nearly 30 years. As Head of the WWT Conservation Action Department, he has managed the spoon-billed sandpiper project for WWT since we first became involved in 2009. His main role is in management, budgeting, fundraising and generally keeping the show on the
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