We are a global network of conservationists, lawyers, scientists economists and artists interested in how existing liability laws can be strategically used to serve conservation.

Originally coordinated out of the Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University, and now a registered Foundation in the Netherlands, Conservation-Litigation.org works with organisations around the world to lead unique legal research, promote strategic courtroom litigation, support judicial and prosecutor education, and provide support to plaintiffs around the world.

Our latest workshop in Kerala, India, brought lawyers, scientists and NGOs together to discuss progress in developing a wave of new cases for nature in India, Indonesia, Cameroon, Uganda, Italy, Liberia and the Philippines.

Executive Committee

Dr Jacob Phelps
Founder & Executive Director

  • Jacob Phelps is an environmental social scientist with a particular interest in policy, legal and governance dimensions of tropical biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource management. Trained in geography and natural sciences, he draws on a wide range of methods and approaches.

    Jacob is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the Conservation-Litigation.org network. He serves as Senior Technical Advisor at the Wildlife Conservation Society Indonesia Programme, supporting conservation projects across the country. He retains an affiliation with the Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University, where he was Senior Lecturer from 2015-2023. Jacob is also Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group - Global Trade Programme, and am Co-Founder of the Nepal Conservation Research Fellowship.

Rika Fajrini
Senior Lawyer & Legal Researcher

  • Rika is a legal researcher at the Indonesian Centre of Environmental Law. She received a Monbukagakusho scholarship and earned her M.GES degree from Kyoto University in 2017 with a research focus on genetic resource utilization and traditional knowledge. Previously, Rika obtained her law degree from the University of Indonesia with a focus on law, society and development studies.

    At ICEL, Rika has been involved in law enforcement and community capacity building programs as well as forest and land governance policy advocacy. Rika plays an important role in research and advocacy on environmental funding, liability for environmental losses, spatial planning policies, and indigenous/local communities' access to natural resources.

Naila Bhatri
Operations & Finance Director

  • Naila Bhatri manages projects, is in charge of financial management, and coordinates with our global partners. She has a background in forensic science and molecular biology, and applies her scientific methods training to run operations and finance at Conservation Litigation. 

Lynne Hempton
Communications & Translation

  • Lynne is an Italian and French translator and copywriter, specialising in the translation of sustainability and environmental reporting. She is Communications Director of Conservation-Litigation.org.

Our Network

  • The Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) focuses on developing environmental law in Indonesia that foregrounds the needs of people at every level and advances social justice. ICEL uses three different approaches in their work: legal reform and policy advocacy, capacity building, and community empowerment. It works with government agencies and state institutions to increase awareness of the need for policy frameworks that benefit people across the country, as well as empowers communities on climate justice issues and helps them develop the tools they need to voice their rights within environmental protection systems.

    • Difa Shafira is Head of the Forestry and Land Governance Division. She specialises in Environmental Law and Natural Resource Management, and is responsible for advocating community capacity building in the field of environmental law, environmental law monitoring and enforcement, and advocacy related to environmental democracy.

    • Prilia Kartika Apsari is a researcher at ICEL, where she is responsible for advocating for strengthening the capacity of institutions and law enforcement systems, as well as strengthening laws related to biodiversity and environmental and natural resource governance.

  • The Last Great Ape organization (LAGA) is a non-governmental organization focused on wildlife law enforcement in Cameroon. Its goal is to fight commercial poaching and the related trade of protected species. It is a field-based organization designed to establish the effective enforcement of national wildlife law that is critical to the survival of the threatened animals, and is the first specialized Law Enforcement NGO in Africa.

    • Ofir Drori is the founder and director of LAGA. Over the last eight years he has lived in 26 African countries as an adventurer, journalist, photographer, educator, and environmental activist. Ofir is driven by a powerful vision: to end the illegal trafficking of endangered wildlife and protect the natural world for future generations. He confronts this global crisis with courage and determination, leading undercover operations and working closely with law enforcement and governments to expose and dismantle criminal networks.

    • Aime Frisco is Head of the Legal Department at the Last Great Ape Organization.

  • The Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) operates in service of India’s natural heritage. Their mission is to conserve wildlife and its habitat, and to work for the welfare of individual wild animals, in partnership with communities and governments. To achieve their goals, WTI maintains an approach undergirded by science and shaped by empathy, focusing on key areas including wildlife crime, species recovery, and human-wildlife conflict mitigation.

    • Jose Louies is CEO and Chief of Wildlife Crime Control at WTI. A wildlife conservationist with more than fifteen years of experience, he specialises in wildlife crime prevention, capacity building of enforcement officials, and project management. He has experience in conservation technology development and deployment, and is an expert on snakes and snakebite mitigation across India.

    • Lovish Sharma is a lawyer at the High Court of Delhi. He has a demonstrated history of working on diverse matters pertaining to Criminal, Constitutional & Environmental Laws. A member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law, he also serves as a Law Enforcement Trainer with the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, Govt. Of India, National Academy of Customs and Wildlife Trust of India.

  • Associazione per la Biodiversità e la sua Conservazione (ABC) was founded with the aim of establishing itself as a centre of research and knowledge on rare, threatened and endangered plants. The project is based around a collection of succulent plants and cacti that includes over 50,000 specimens belonging to thousands of different species. The association’s mission is to promote concrete action to protect and conserve biodiversity anywhere in the world, and to support actions to increase understanding and awareness about sustainable plant collections.

    • Andrea Cattabriga is President of the Associazione per la Biodiversità e la sua Conservazione (ABC).

  • Greenhood Nepal is an impactful, respected, science-driven conservation organization dedicated to protecting Nepal’s most threatened biodiversity.

    The organisation is best known for its work addressing illegal wildlife trade and conserving species that have been traditionally neglected in conservation. It is also recognized for its outspokenness on contentious conservation-development debates. Greenhood aims to empower others with knowledge, opportunities, and research to protect threatened wildlife and improve on-the-ground management, using science-based, people-centred approaches that balance the needs of human and natural communities. It works in collaboration with local communities, governments, researchers, and non-governmental national and international organizations as well as universities.

    • Kumar Paudel is the Founder and Director of Greenhood Nepal. He oversees the overall operations of Greenhood Nepal, including research, program development and implementations, policy advocacy, quality control and supervision. His work primarily involves interdisciplinary conservation research covering law enforcement, wildlife trade, community-based conservation, conservation strategy and policy. He uses a range of outreach and public engagement to share conservation research in simpler ways and undertake interventions to inform conservation policy and actions on the ground.

  • The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) makes law work for people, places, and the planet. Its vision is “a healthy environment, prosperous economies, and vibrant communities founded on the rule of law.”

    ELI’s Mission is to foster innovative, just, and practical law and policy solutions to enable leaders across borders and sectors to make environmental, economic, and social progress. ELI’s work includes efforts to build the skills and capacity of tomorrow’s leaders and institutions, research and analyze complex and pressing environmental challenges, promote and disseminate the best thinking through print and electronic media, and convene people with diverse perspectives to build understanding through robust debate.

    • Carol Adaire Jones joined ELI as Visiting Scholar in September 2014, following a 30-year career as an environmental economist in both government and academia. She is co-leading ELI’s project on Tropical Environmental Liability – her focus is on the valuation of damage claims. Across her career, two major areas of emphasis have been valuing natural resource damages for federal and state environmental litigation, and conducting research to inform the design of environmental and resource conservation policy.

    • Jay Pendergrass is Senior Advisor on Research and Policy at ELI and is an environmental and natural resources lawyer with broad experience in government, private practice, academic, and non-profit sectors. He has authored several articles, book chapters, and reports on climate change, energy, long-term stewardship of contaminated sites, nanotechnology, federalism, state environmental programs, hazardous substance cleanup programs, community management of natural resources, coal mining reclamation, National Environmental Policy Act litigation, international environmental law, and other topics.

  • ​Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue & Protection is the first and only chimpanzee sanctuary and conservation center in Liberia rescuing chimpanzees who are victims of the illegal bushmeat and pet trades. Currently over 100 orphaned chimpanzees, most still babies or children, are currently under the care of Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue & Protection.

    • Jenny Desmond is co-founder and director of LCRP. She is an animal welfare and conservation consultant, and provides guidance and support in a variety of capacities to international private and not-for-profit organizations.

    • Dr Jim Desmond is a wildlife veterinarian specializing in emerging infectious diseases. He is a consultant with several international NGO’s including EcoHealth Alliance, Smithsonian Institution, Jane Goodall Institute, and the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA). As a consultant, Jimmy has worked in many countries around the world conducting field based infectious disease research.

  • The Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) was founded in 1990 with the aim of empowering communities to safeguard natural resources and environment through developmental legal assistance, education, and advocacy. Viewing environmental protection, human rights and social justice as inseparable, ELAC combats deforestation, extractive and destructive development projects and coastal degradation by pursuing public interest litigation, shaping policy, and building local capacity. Its core work includes training community paralegals and forest, wildlife and fish wardens, strategic litigation on extractive and destructive development activities, and pushing for stronger environmental legislation and enforcement. Despite political pressure and corporate threats, ELAC’s team continues to pursue environmental justice and conservation projects that protect forests and marine biodiversity, urging local and global partners to join the cause.

    • Gerthie Mayo-Anda is executive director of ELAC. She is an environmental attorney with over 25 years of field-based practice in environmental advocacy and community-based resource management work in the Philippines. She works on Seminars and Trainings organized by the Philippine Judicial Academy (Philja), Alternative Law Groups (ALG) and government agencies on environmental laws, new rules on the prosecution of environmental cases, coastal law enforcement, climate change and environmental governance. She is an author and co-author of various articles and publications on environmental policy, environmental governance, community-based resource management, mining, REDD+ and corruption risks.

    • Raffy Pajeres is a Filipino environmental lawyer at the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC). He is also a member of the non-governmental network the Alternative Law Group (ALG).

    • Natalia Muñoz Cassolis is a lawyer and conservation social scientist. She is admitted to practice in Colombia and Paris, France, and holds master’s degrees from Université Panthéon-Assas and the University of Kent. Her work focuses on the intersection of law, governance, and conservation, with expertise in legal and policy analysis, project management, advocacy, and social science research. Natalia’s work primarily explores the links between the illegal wildlife trade, organized crime, and corruption, as well as the interventions aimed at addressing these issues. She is a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution.

  • Justice Hive is a non-profit organization based in Kampala, Uganda focusing on access to justice and human rights issues within the East African region.  Its projects are geared towards improving access to justice, space for human rights as well as enhancing the rule of law.  The organization is composed of young professionals with a passion to improve the performance of justice systems of the various countries within the East African region. In execution of its work, Justice Hive works with various state institutions and civil society actors in the Justice Law and Order Sectors including the State Police, the Judiciary, the office of Director for Public Prosecution, Prisons and other stakeholder institutions in the justice sector.

    • Blair Atwebembeire is an attorney at law specialising in Commercial and Natural Resources Law. He has extensive experience in commercial and corporate undertakings, public law and natural resource ventures (Oil & gas, Minerals and Tourism). He is also experienced in wildlife law and previously acted as lawyer for the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

Our global network of partner organisations and collaborators represents a strategic lever to building a wave of legal action to support environmental action and deliver meaningful remedies for nature.

Our Broader Network

  • Taufiq Purna Nugraha
    Primary Investigator of the Laboratory of Wildlife Management and Reproduction, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, who has particular interests in wildlife enforcement and orangutan conservation.

  • Ucha Dzimistarishvili
    Managing Partner of Caissa Law, Georgia and Assistant Professor at New Vision University, who helped with drafting Georgia’s new environmental liability legislation.

  • Rebecca Nichols
    Lecturer in Psychology at Nanyang Technological University, with experience studying jurors’ attitudes and decision-making.

  • Anna Mance
    Assistant Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law, with particular experience in climate litigation.

  • Grahat Nagara
    Lecturer at Jentera Law School, and expert in administrative and environmental law.

  • Rony Saputra
    Director of Law for Auriga Nusantara, where he actively campaigns for a clean environment for the people of Indonesia.

  • Amir Sokolowski
    Global Director of Climate Change at CDP, experienced in environmental and human rights law.

  • Sakshi Aravind
    Lecturer in Law at Newcastle Law School, focused on indigenous communities and environmental litigation.

  • Susan Cheyne
    Director of Borneo Nature Foundation & Vice-Chair of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group Section on Small Apes.

  • Alexander Lees
    Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University with a focus on ornithology and forest ecology.

  • Stuart Sharp
    Lecturer at Lancaster University with a focus on animal ecology and ornithology.

  • Edward L. Webb
    Professor of Global Forests and Land Use at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki.

  • Colin Sytsma
    Documentary filmmaker at Wood Grain Media, with a passion for great ape conservation.

  • Jaclyn Schwanke
    Illustrator and animator, including of “Pongo the Stolen Orangutan: How Law Can Heal” and the artwork on this website.

  • Belinda Sahadati Amri
    Project Officer at Kemitraan (Partnership for Governance Reform), with a particular interest in human rights and the environment.

  • Kathleen Wootton
    Housing and human rights lawyer and researcher based in Canada, with a passion for Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Due Diligence.

  • Umi Latifah
    Forestry researcher based in Indonesia.

  • Ana Maria Carvajal Londoño Junior Environmental Lawyer in Colombia, formerly a legal intern of Conservation-Litigation.

  • Francesca Falco is a senior environmental lawyer and consultant with expertise on EU and Italian environmental and energy law.