DrShane Mc Guinness

At present, I am a Coordinator of the WaterLANDS project, a Horizon 2020 Green Deal-funded project seeking to upscale the restoration of wetlands across Europe. This project involves 32 partners across 14 European countries, disbursing €23 million for active restoration across ecological, community, governance and finance elements. See: https://waterlands.eu/
I am also a founder and Director of Peatland Finance Ireland, a not-for-profit initiative aimed at establishing, and ensuring the management of, a national and catchment scale blended-finance system for peatland restoration in Ireland.

I am conservation biologist by training, specialising in the human dimensions of wildlife conflict. The predominance of this work has centred on protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa, focussing on islands of semi-tropical rainforest and the interactions of forest-dwelling fauna with subsistence farmers living on the margins of these areas.
More recently, this work has included work of an Irish context, assessing bird conservation relating to wind energy development and roads infrastructure.
My work takes a political ecology approach first and foremost, while also assessing the spatiotemporal context of conflict.
I obtained my primary degree in Zoology from Trinity College Dublin, following this up with an MSc. in Biodiversity and Conservation and a PhD in Conservation Biology from the same institution. I have previously worked in the Institute of Zoology at the Zoological Society of London, the Discovery and Learning Department of Dublin Zoo, as a postdoctoral researcher in Trinity College and the National University of Ireland Galway, and in the Policy and Advocacy section of Birdwatch Ireland.
I have also been heavily involved in science outreach for the entirety of my career, either as a voluntary addition to my work, or as a dedicated role (Dublin Zoo, Cell EXPLORERS NIUG), including as co-founder of Biodiversity In Our Lives, a public advocacy group aimed at promoting the value of native biodiversity in the wider community.
I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2014 and have been involved in the application and management of various FP7 and SFI Discover grants, spanning conservation biology and science education.

Media enquiries: Wetlands, Peatlands, Biodiversity, Nature finance, Carbon Credits