People and Fauna
ENV/105x, Environment Building, Campus West, University of York (Map)
Event details
What can a Costa Rican’s conservation journey teach us about living with wildlife?
This seminar traces a personal and professional timeline through human–wildlife conflict and coexistence, moving across research projects, community experiences and institutional shifts.
Dr Ronit Amit will share examples from work with jaguars and local communities to reflect on both the achievements and contradictions of conservation in a country often viewed as a global environmental leader.
The talk will highlight what has changed for the better, where tensions persist, and why coexistence requires not only ecological knowledge, but also fairness, imagination and sustained attention to people’s lived realities.
About the speaker
Dr. Ronit Amit
Dr. Ronit Amit is an Associate Professor at the School of Biology in the University of Costa Rica and a researcher of the Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Ecología Tropical (CIBET) of that university. Her doctorate from the University of Florida was in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation with emphasis on Human Dimensions, under a Fulbright scholarship. Ronit's main interests include incentive-based community conservation programs, biodiversity policy, and human-wildlife conflict and coexistence.
With 20+ years of experience, she has designed, and implemented impactful conservation programs, securing and managing major international grants, including the UK’s Darwin Initiative. As an academic and practitioner, she has assessed conservation proposals and provided evidence-based policy recommendations to international grant review committees, such as Biodiversa+ of the EU.
At the University of Costa Rica, Ronit teaches interdisciplinary ecology, research design and behavioral sciences, and since 2022, she has been a member of the IUCN's Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist Group.