Ross Wanless
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Ross Wanless is based in Cape Town, South Africa and is a professional ornithologist, conservation biologist and, whenever time permits, birder and naturalist guide. There are two great passions in his professional life, islands and seabirds. Ross's interest in islands started on Aldabra Atoll, where he did the fieldwork for his MSc degree, reintroducing the flightless rail to Picard Island. In between extended stays on Aldabra, he visited and birded virtually all the significant islands in the Seychelles, as well as Mauritius, Reunion, and Comoros. From the Seychelles, he went on to study islands from the deep south subantarctic to the Tropics, and has specialized in spending lots of time on islands that very few people ever get to visit. Ross holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town for research done on Gough Island in the South Atlantic. He has used the results of this work to drive several conservation initiatives for the seabirds as well as the restoration of Gough's ecology. Ross has traveled widely and birded wherever he goes, and if he is not producing scientific papers for international journals, he writes popular articles and publishes his photographs in birding magazines. At home, he regularly indulges in his passion for seabirds by arranging and leading pelagic birding trips to the legendary seas off Cape Town.