BRINCC Team

The BRINCC management team provides oversight, strategy and vision. They are unpaid professionals who donate their time and expertise to support BRINCC and their partners in delivering their mission to create community owned and managed protected areas. 
All the management team work in community-based conservation and have decades of experience of living, working and conducting research and conservation in Kalimantan.  
(click photos for more info)

Peter Houlihan

PETER HOULIHAN specializes in coordinating and leading scientific expeditions into some of the planet's least accessible and most threatened tropical rainforests for conservation. In the past 15 years, he has led more than 35 expeditions across four continents and more than 20 countries. He is passionate about engaging and working with communities where he works and inspiring others to learn about our natural world. As a multilingual photographer, videographer, and producer, Peter fuses his conservation science with impactful media to inform broad international audiences about our planet. Peter's own research in tropical ecology has focused on butterfly community ecology, primate behavior, bat predation, and orchid pollination ecology. He is also an expert tree climber, utilizing this skill to study and document rainforest canopies, and train students to do the same. His research, conservation work, and science communication has led to the establishment of new protected areas and is resulting in the documentation of species new to science.  One of BRINCC's Directors and co-Founders, Peter has worked in Kalimantan, and across Borneo with various NGOs and institutions, since 2009. Houlihan is a National Geographic Explorer, Explorers Club Fellow, Gear Tester for Patagonia, Photographer represented by National Geographic Image Collection, and Affiliate of the International League of Conservation Photographers.

Dominic Rowland

DOMINIC ROWLAND is a interdisciplinary​ researcher with a background in Biology and Public Health.  His research mainly focuses on Indonesia where he worked since 2008, both as an ecologist and social scientist. His research focuses on the intersection between environmental change and human health, with a specific focus on the contributions of forests and forest-based agriculture towards livelihoods, healthy diets and nutritional status. His research has mainly comprised of biodiversity surveys, participatory ecosystem service mapping, and livelihoods and dietary surveys in both forest and palm oil dependent communities. Dominic is currently doing his PhD research in West Kalimantan on palm oil, land use change and nutrition sensitive landscapes. He also consults for various organisations on issues relating to palm oil, forests and land use change. Dominic also led the first BRINCC Expedition in 2011 during which baseline biodiversity assessments and participatory mapping were conducted. 
DR SUSAN CHEYNE Associate Lecturer on the MSc in Primate Conservation since 2010 at Oxford Brookes Univesity and is co-director of the Borneo Nature Foundation . Susan has carried out research in South East Asia since 1997 and Indonesia since 2002. She leads a long-term study of gibbon behaviour, ecology and socio-ecology in peat-swamp forests as well as conducting a detailed study of gibbon population density and distribution across Indonesian Borneo (Hylobates albibarbis, H. muelleri  and H. funereus). Susan also initiated the first long-term, detailed study of felid and large mammal biodiversity and conservation in the area, and across Indonesian Borneo with a focus on the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi). In addition Susan oversees the continuation of the first long-term study of red langurs (Presbytis rubicunda) in peat-swamp forest. Susan works with several IUCN Specialist groups advising on and leading conservation policy and is the Vice Chair of the IUCN Section on Small Apes. I have also carried out surveys on flying fox hunting and abundance, and is interested in how anthropogenic factors affect biodiversity in peat-swamp forests
Andrea Höing  has regularly worked in Kalimantan since 2006 in conservation and community research. She is currently a researcher and doctoral student at the chair of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. She studied "International Nature Conservation" at Lincoln University, New Zealand and Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany, where she developed her research interest towards social-ecological issues. She formally worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Passau Chair of Comparative Development and Cultural Studies, South-East-Asia. She worked for OUTROP (now Borneo Nature Foundation) over several years and conducted her masters research on endemic primates on Siberut island, Mentawai, Sumatra, Indonesia. Andreas research interests are  in human-nature relationships. She chose to conduct an "Assessment of Social and Ecological Threats as Perceived by Dayaks" for her thesis research with BRINCC 2011. Before BRINCC 2011 she has been on several smaller expeditions in the Sebangau Peatswamp Forests. Andrea has also coordinated BRINCC's on-going participatory mapping project.
MICHAL ZRUST,  is the Southeast Asia Regional Manager at Daemeter Consulting and founder and CTO of Lestari Capital , utilizing his extensive network and experience in the region working with NGOs, companies, and certification organisations. The latest programme that he led in his previous position in the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was a collaboration with the private sector to develop environmental and social HCV monitoring, reporting and verification systems specific to the oil palm industry. 
 
Mike completed his MSc on Wildlife Management and Conservation at the University of Reading in the UK. He has been a member of the RSPO Biodiversity and HCV Working Group for over three years and represented the environmental NGO sector on the RSPO’s Board of Governors for the last two years in his role as the biodiversity and oil palm technical advisor with the ZSL.