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Allyson grew up in England and began her career assisting in studies of mating strategies in wild and park populations of fallow deer in the UK. She also spent time restoring dormice habitat on the Isle of Wight, and studying bats in woodlands for the Forestry Commission. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology & Oceanography  (BSc Hons 1990) from University of Southampton.

 

As a Research Assistant at  Bristol University, she assisted on projects reintroducing dormice, and tracking invasive muntjack deer, rescued urban foxes, and badgers on farms, before embarking on her doctoral research. This focussed on the landscape ecology of bats and how weather and connectivity influence habitat use (PhD 1995). Moving to London as a Post Doctoral Researcher for Aberdeen University, she spent five years designing and delivering a national citizen science project to monitor bat populations across the UK, supported by DEFRA/The Bat Conservation Trust. This project, The UK National Bat Monitoring Programme, continues today, providing data for the UK State of Nature Report.

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In 2001, Allyson moved to the United States and spent two years in the role of Science Director for Bat Conservation International. While raising funds and forging global partnerships for bat conservation, she was offered the role of Chief Operating Officer at the Lubee Bat Conservancy in Florida, and moved to curate a unique living animal collection of over 250 old world fruit bats. Gaining American Zoo and Aquarium accreditation for this research and breeding centre, she raised funding to develop cross-disciplinary research partnerships with a strong focus on infectious diseases, and advancing community-based conservation efforts across the globe.

 

Allyson moved to Southern California in 2011, after landing one of the greatest jobs in the world;  Associate Director of Recovery Ecology at San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. She managed a portfolio of remote field conservation stations and high- profile endangered species recovery programs. These included leading the reintroduction program for the California Condor a in Baja California, Mexico, leading the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in the Mojave Desert, Nevada, oversight of the U.S Navy San Clemente Loggerhead shrike breeding program on San Clemente Island, California,  and leading the Hawaiian Endangered Bird Conservation Program on the islands of Maui, Kauai, and Big Island, Hawaii. She worked closely with USFWS and in-country stakeholders including NGOs, zoos, government agencies, and local communities, to ensure continuity, growth, and sustainability of conservation reintroduction and restoration projects. In 2015 , the desert tortoise team were awarded a commendation from Senator Harry Reid and the USFWS in Nevada, and in 2017 the condor team were one of six zoo teams awarded the Association of Zoos and Aquariums “Top Honors” for the North American Conservation Award for the California Condor Bi-national Recovery and Reintroduction Program. This annual award recognises exceptional efforts toward regional habitat preservation, species restoration, and support of biodiversity in the wild. In 2018, the project Allyson co-led to save honeycreepers endemic to Kauai, Hawaii was awarded the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Recovery Champion Award.

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Returning to the UK in 2015 to be near family and reduce her international travel carbon footprint, Allyson began re-entry to UK life at Herefordshire Wildlife Trust supporting Living Landscape projects, then moved east tembarking on a novel role as Coordinator of the Cambridge Infectious Diseases Interdisciplinary Research Centre, at University of Cambridge. This move expanded her disciplinary horizons and she followed her growing interest in partnership building and applying interdisciplinary approaches to working with students, academics, and commercial business partners to seek significant sized grants to solve emerging global sustainability challenges.

 

Moving westward again to set up a home in Shropshire, she recently spent a year as Fundraising and Marketing Officer for Nature's SAFE, a new charity dedicated to safeguarding the future of our natural world by preserving living cells of animals at risk of extinction. "The Big Freeze"

 

Allyson lives in Shropshire with her American husband, a Welsh Corgi, and an optimistically sized vegetable plot. She is looking forward to returning back to bats in a role for the Bat Conservation Trust Bats in Churches project in early 2023. Her goal is to get back to the business of saving and restoring biodiversity of our wild Isles in the context of the human-wildlife conflict and the climate and biodiversity crisis.

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