James E. Coleman

James is from Liberia, West Africa and currently, a Ph.D. student at Yale University, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, majoring in Environmental Management with a focus on natural renewable resources management.

Since 1989, James has worked as a field biologist/conservationist in various capacities for a number of conservation organizations and institutions. For example in 1989, he was employed as a Wildlife Conservation Officer by the Wildlife Department of the Forestry Development Authority (FDA), Republic of Liberia, as a counterpart to two British Ecologists who headed a "national wildlife survey" of Liberia. During the period from 1996 to 1999, he served as Head of National Parks and Other Protected Areas (FDA), with the responsibility for upgrading, establishing, and managing national parks, nature reserves and other equivalent protected areas, as well as assessing wildlife population densities in areas of conservation priority. Recently (1999-2000), he worked for a consortium of international conservation organizations as a Conservation Manager for the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary located in Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria, in collaboration with the Cross River State Forestry Commission, Calabar.

James' most recent research was a "summer internship", initiated under the auspices of the Cross River State Forestry Commission. This involved a review of management strategies for mitigating socioeconomic pressure on the newly gazetted Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary in Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria, West Africa, based on the policy sciences approach to problem-solving.