Conservation Firsthand
Travel
WWF Experts
Shannon Barber-Meyer
Tiger Conservation Program Officer, Species Conservation Program and TRAFFIC North America
Education
- Post-Doctoral Scholar – Emperor Penguin Population Monitoring, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego
- PhD – Wildlife Conservation major with Ecology, Evolution and Behavior minor, University of Minnesota
- BS – Biology major with Chemistry and Math minors, Eckerd College, Florida
Areas of Expertise
- Large carnivore ecology and conservation
- Animal behavior
- Population monitoring
- Radio telemetry and wildlife biology field techniques
"Tracking wild wolves on the hunt, watching emperor penguin chicks huddle for warmth and hearing the roar of a wild tiger – these have been some of the most amazing experiences of my life. Through WWF’s conservation efforts these experiences can be shared by generations to come."
About Shannon Barber-Meyer:
Shannon’s work focuses on providing technical scientific support to field teams in development and implementation of tiger and tiger prey monitoring protocols. She also participates in efforts to combat illegal and unsustainable trade in Asian big cats.
From the time she first tracked wild wolves, Shannon was hooked for life as a wildlife biologist. Since then she’s conducted research on the foraging patterns of wolves in Minnesota, elk calf mortality in Yellowstone, emperor penguin populations in Antarctica, photopollution impacts on sugar glider behavior and is now working on tiger conservation throughout Asia with WWF. Some of her most memorable wildlife experiences include releasing an endangered Mexican wolf into the wild, watching a wild tiger in India for two hours (awesome!), the wheel breaking off the survey plane while landing on jagged Antarctic sea ice at a remote penguin colony (thank you Italian team for the rescue), dolphin surveys from the sunny beaches of California, going full speed backwards on a twisting narrow road while being chased by a bull elephant (our driver was an off-road expert – phew!), conducting winter bison surveys while snowmobiling in Yellowstone (so cold one of her eyes froze partially shut), chatting away with wild grey wolf pups (so much to howl on about), being bluff charged by a male grizzly, spying on magnificent frigatebird behavior (tricky little pirates) in the sunny Dry Tortugas, and seeing my first ever tiger track shown to me in Cambodia by an ex-poacher turned conservationist for WWF! Her favorite part of being a wildlife biologist is when she gets to be in the field “where the wild things are” – the very wild that WWF is working to protect for generations to come.
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