Maldonado, Angela M

Fundación Entropika

Colombia

Angela Maldonado is the director of Fundación Entropika, an organization that carries out participatory conservation work with indigenous people in the Amazon. She has a MSc and a PhD from Oxford Brookes University (UK), and received the prestigious Whitley Gold Award for her research and efforts in tackling the illegal trade of night monkeys used for malaria research. Her conservation work focuses on finding ways to improve environmental law enforcement and implementing sustainable livelihoods such as nature tourism for Amazonian communities involved in illegal extraction of natural resources. With the collaboration of several institutions, she is conducting international research on night monkeys, including genetic identification and health screening to create a binational conservation strategy for protecting this unique nocturnal species traded for over 35 years, whose habitat is severely fragmented by deforestation for timber extraction and coca plantations at the Colombian-Peruvian border.