About the Speaker

Dr. Matt Hallett is the Manager of the Guyana Conservation Initiative at the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens and courtesy faculty in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. He earned his Bachelor’s in Biology from the College of Charleston, Master’s in Zoology from Miami University (OH), and PhD in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida. Matt has been working in Guyana for much of the last eight years, estimating jaguar populations in one of Guyana's newest protected areas, assessing the impacts of logging and hunting on large mammals, assisting communities with wildlife management planning and mitigating human-jaguar conflict, managing biodiversity assessments, facilitating field courses, and supporting community-based conservation and research at Caiman House Research Station. Matt got his start in the zoo and aquarium industry, working at North Carolina Zoo, South Carolina Aquarium and the John G. Shedd Aquarium, gaining field experiences in Kenya, the Great Lakes, South Africa, the Bahamas, and Malaysian Borneo during stops in between. Ultimately, experiences in the field led Matt back to academia and have inspired him to consistently pursue work that falls at the intersection of humans and nature with the challenge of developing creative solutions that maximize the benefits to both. He will tell you more about how his work in Guyana is attempting to accomplish just that.