dalia amor conde

Dalia Amor Conde is a conservation ecologist and associate professor at Southern Denmark University and is also the Director of Science at Species360. She is best known for her work on jaguar conservation. 

She was born in 1974 in Mexico City. She decided as a child that she wanted to study the rainforest when she read a copy of National Geographic magazine that had an orangutan and a baby on the cover. She was inspired to read about a woman who was living in the rainforest with her child so she could study orangutans.

Dalia became interested in biology and started working with zoo conservation, putting tracking collars on jaguars to collect data about their behavior. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Mexico and her Ph.D. at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

She has published over 60 articles about deforestation, jaguars, and zoos. She has studied how the different sexes of jaguars have different behaviors in the wild, such as how male jaguars preferred tall forests while the female foxes prefer smaller forests.

Born: 1974

Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico Education: Ph.D. in Ecology Occupation: Conservation ecologist and associate professor

Expeditions: Popocatepetl Volcano, the Chihuahua Desert, the Mayan Forest, Melgat Tiger Reserve (India), and crossing southern Africa from Mozambique to Namibia

Favorite Place To Be: Fully present wherever I am

Best Discovery: That there is still so much to discover, especially when you ask the simplest questions

Favorite Items In The Field: Binoculars, a journal, and of course my husband

Personal Heroes: Darwin and James Hansen

Hobbies: Learning to cook food from all over the world, yoga, traveling

Advice: If you are passionate about something, keep doing it, fight for it, enjoy it, and if you are not doing it perfectly, do not give up, just keep doing it