About Izele
Izele is managed by the Izele Community Interest Company (CIC), a not-for-profit organisation based in Canterbury in the UK. We are named after a species of evergreen tree from southeast Africa, which is called the black bird-berry in English and iZele in Zulu. This tree is found within the region where we piloted our project and has star-shaped yellow flowers, which form the basis of the Izele logo.
Our work has been funded and supported by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Wildlands Conservation, the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust and the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative. Our current focus is on conservation areas and organisations in Eswatini, Mozambique and South Africa but we are expanding to other countries soon.
Why sign up for Izele?Our partners
Our team
Dr Bob Smith, Founder and CEO
Bob Smith is a conservation scientist with over 20 years’ experience of working on conservation area projects. Much of this work has focused on identifying priority areas for conservation, ranging from improving global conservation policy to designing software to help inform decision makers. He has run long-term projects in southern Africa and the UK and carried out research in 22 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. He is also the Director of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, an Honorary Senior Fellow at the United Nations Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Protected Areas.
Tom Mullier, Chief Information Officer
Tom Mullier specialises in marine spatial planning, geographical information systems (GIS) and software development, and has more than 15 years of web development and user interface design experience. His previous experience includes assessing data quality as part of the designation process for Marine Conservation Zones in England, assessing the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas in the Atlantic Ocean and developed the MPA Reality Check webGIS that provides insights on how England is protecting and managing its marine environment.
Dr Annie Huggins, Engagement Manager
Annie is a conservation scientist, specialising in GIS and priority area design. She has experience designing protected area networks in South America, The Caribbean and The Baltic Sea and with conservation projects in Mauritius, Rodrigues, the Seychelles and Costa Rica. She’s also working with researchers at the Wild Camel Protection Foundation in Mongolia. The love for conservation GIS, however, started with research on Black Rhinos in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
