Annabella Helman (PhD student, UW)

Growing up visiting my parents' childhood homes in South Africa meant visiting the incredible wildlife in Pilanesberg National Park. The respect I gained for the interconnectedness of this ecosystem and effects of predators in that landscape cultivated my love for the natural world.

Throughout my undergraduate, I worked on several behavior, cognition, and metabolic studies at the Duke Lemur Center. Between semesters, I collared black bears in western Virginia, captured seabirds in the Dry Tortugas, and tracked African wild dogs in the Okavango Delta. Following graduation, I joined the Carnivore Monitoring Crew with the US Forest Service in the Sierra Nevada, working to understand responses of fishers to wildfire and drought.

For my PhD, I am excited to work with Lion Landscapes to explore human-carnivore conflict and coexistence, as well as predator-prey dynamics and intraguild or interspecific competition among large carnivores.

When I’m not in the field or at a computer, I love to draw, curate ultra-specific playlists, or find a new hike!