Joanna Lambert, Ph.D.

Dr. Joanna Lambert is a scientist and tenured professor of evolutionary ecology and conservation biology at the University of Colorado – Boulder, where she also serves as Director of the American Canid Project.  Born and raised in industrial England and an immigrant to the Rust Belt of the United States, Joanna Lambert spent her formative years observing wildlife in heavily urbanized landscapes. She has spent her adult life making up for this by traveling to some of the planet’s most remote regions to study wild animals in wild places. Her research has now taken her to all seven continents, but a major focus has been on equatorial Africa, where she studies primates such as chimpanzees, and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where she studies carnivores such as grey wolves.

Lambert has published several books and hundreds of peer-reviewed articles on her research on the behavioral ecology, physiology, and evolution of wild mammals. For her efforts, she has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London – the institution where Charles Darwin first presented his theory of evolution.  Previous to her position at the University of Colorado – Boulder, Lambert was a Professor at the University of Texas, a Visiting Scientist at Duke University, an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, and Program Director at the National Science Foundation.  She is also a Master Instructor at the Yellowstone Institute and teaches intensive field seminars in Yellowstone National Park.  She has held numerous Editorial positions for peer-reviewed science journals such as Frontiers in Mammal Science, Oecologia, PLoS ONE, Diversity, Integrative Zoology, Tropical Conservation Science, American Journal of Biological Anthropology, American Journal of Primatology, and African Primates.

Throughout almost 40 years of field research worldwide, she has witnessed extraordinary challenges to biodiversity and human quality of life – realities that have fundamentally impacted her approach to science.  She has no patience for scientists who remain cloistered in the Ivory Tower.  Now, in addition to being a field scientist and educator, she is also a conservation practitioner and activist.  In this capacity, she serves as a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission, as a science advisor to the United Nations Environmental Programme, as Chief Science Officer of Conservation Nation, and as Senior Science Advisor and Board Member of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project.  One of Joanna’s proudest rewilding accomplishments has been playing a central role in reintroducing endangered gray wolves into Colorado.  In her spare time, Joanna spends as much time as she can off-grid in wild and rugged places, preferably on a horse and with her dogs, striving for optimism and solutions in a challenging world.