Cody Aylward is a senior connectivity specialist at WWF. He uses spatial analysis and genomic tools to improve wildlife conservation outcomes in a rapidly changing world. Leveraging different monitoring approaches to understand wildlife movement in fragmented landscapes, Cody helps design corridors and connectivity areas to support biodiversity conservation and human communities. His work also integrates the latest advances in DNA technology to track species' movements, monitor population health, and combat wildlife crime.
Cody works in several of WWF's flagship transboundary landscapes, applying genomic tools to understand the connectivity of elephant populations in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) in southern Africa and several priority landscapes in Southeast Asia. Through these programs, he is focused on building capacity for genomic applications, including groundbreaking, field-based portable DNA sequencing technology.
Cody also works in priority landscapes for WWF's Nature-based Solutions Origination Platform. In the Central Annamites Landscape in Viet Nam and Laos, he is helping promote a landscape scale conservation program by developing a robust monitoring and management strategy for biodiversity corridors.
Before coming to WWF, Cody received a master's from the University of Vermont, a Ph.D. from UC Davis, and completed a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Minnesota. He serves as a member of the American Society of Mammalogists Conservation Committee and the Molecular Ecology Working Group of The Wildlife Society. He holds faculty positions as an adjunct assistant professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont and an affiliate faculty at the Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit at UC Davis. His work has been published in scientific journals such as Conservation Genetics, Landscape Ecology, and Animal Conservation.
