Jennifer Verdolin

I am an animal behaviorist and conservation scientist passionate about understanding and protecting the complex relationships between people and wildlife. My research has taken me from studying the social lives of mountain gorillas in Uganda to leading community-based conservation projects in two Ugandan national parks. As a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, I worked to develop programs that connected science, culture, and conservation.

My current work on mountain gorillas continues but we are adding an incredibly important project in Queen Elizabeth National Park. This project focuses on how pollution affects ecosystems shared by humans and wildlife. We will also be utilizing emerging tools like environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect hidden threats to biodiversity and human health. Through my 501(c3) organization, Wild Connection, I am committed to integrating local communities into every stage of research, from training and empowering farmers, students, and rangers as citizen scientists to building lasting conservation capacity and solutions that work for both people and nature.

October 2025