People

Kelly Holland is a Master’s student at the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. She is originally from New Jersey and received her B.S in Wildlife Conservation and Ecology from the University of Delaware in 2017. As an undergraduate, she researched habitat suitability for coyote (Canis latrans) throughout the state of Delaware as their range and populations expanded. After she graduated, she worked for the U.S Forest Service in Arizona and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service in Florida helping with research and recovery projects for threatened and endangered species including Mexican spotted owls, Mt. Graham red squirrels, frosted flatwoods salamanders, red-cockaded woodpeckers, and loggerhead sea turtles. Before joining the lab, she was a biological technician at Florida Panther NWR in southwest Florida. Co-advised by Dr. Tracey Tuberville, Kelly’s MS research will compare biological communities of historically contaminated areas to reference sites within the Savannah River Site. Her research interests include wildlife conservation, population and community ecology, habitat management, and anthropogenic effects on wildlife.  

Madeline Melton is a Master’s student in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. She graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2016 with a B.S. in Animal Sciences and a minor in Spanish. She has worked on a variety of projects across the United States focusing on bobcat spatial ecology, elk calf and mule deer fawn survival, fisher monitoring and black-tailed deer migration. She lived in Africa for 3.5 years where she was a research manager working for an NGO studying carnivores in Malawi, specifically urban spotted hyenas, and a field manager for the Simien Mountains Gelada Research project researching the behavior, ecology, and endocrinology of gelada monkeys in the Ethiopian Highlands. Previously, she was a research technician with the Beasley Lab on a project focusing on the efficacy of lure choice in wild pigs in Texas and South Carolina, and is currently using the dataset to investigate carnivore lure selection in the same regions. Maddie is interested in wildlife urbanization, carnivore ecology, and human-wildlife coexistence. Her graduate research will focus on the effects of human settlements and livestock on carnivore movement and occupancy in the greater Etosha landscape in northern Namibia. 

Josef Toivo Ndjimba is a Master’s student at the Namibia University of Science and Technology working in collaboration with the Ongava Research Centre, Etosha Ecological Institution, and the University of Georgia. He has a Bachelor of Honours degree in Natural Resources Management where he undertook a research project assessing woody vegetation dynamics along degradation gradients in communal areas of the Greater Waterberg Landscape Conservation Area, Central Namibia under the NamTip project. He has 10 years of conservation experience related to the sustainable utilization of natural resources, rangeland and fire management, environmental and community-based natural resource management, law enforcement and crime prevention, human-wildlife conflict management, tourism development, park management, and landscape and transboundary conservation. He is passionate about conducting research addressing current and growing environmental concerns faced by many Namibians. His Master's project, “Human-carnivore interactions along the northern periphery of Etosha National Park, North-western Namibia,” will examine factors that facilitate or inhibit coexistence between humans and carnivores in the northern multiple-use areas of the Greater Etosha Landscape. The overall aim of this research is to design a conservation strategy and implement necessary mitigation measures to enable human-carnivore coexistence within this critically important landscape and the surrounding multiple-use areas. 

Brennan PetersonWood is a master’s student in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. He graduated with a B.A. in Biology, concentrating in Ecology and Evolution, in 2016 from Colorado College. During his undergrad, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service conducting a variety of wildlife surveys for threatened and endangered species. Since then, he has worked between East Africa and California for both NGOs and state agencies in the fields of human-wildlife conflict research and mitigation. Most recently with the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife on gray wolf management and conflict reduction. Prior to that, he managed applied research programs in Malawi studying bats and large carnivores with a focus on urban/peri-urban spotted hyena ecology and associated human-wildlife conflict, and human-elephant conflict in Southern Tanzania. His graduate research will investigate the drivers of human-carnivore conflict in Etosha National Park in Namibia, and various deterrence tools. 

Katie Quinlin is a Master's student in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. She graduated from the Ohio State University in 2020 with a B.S. in Environment and Natural Resources. While at OSU, she worked in an aquaculture lab where she focused on understanding the relationship between temperature and sex determination in yellow perch and the effect of diet on zebrafish reproduction. After graduating, she worked as a research technician at Purdue University investigating the toxicity of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and aqueous film forming foams to aquatic species. Her research interests include ecotoxicology, community ecology, conservation, and reproductive ecology. Katie's graduate research will focus on Cs-137 and Hg and the efficacy of remedial actions at reducing their bioavailability to biota within a contaminated canal system on the Savannah River Site. 

John Heydinger is a postdoctoral researcher for the Beasley Lab. A trained historian, geographer, and conservation biologist, John performs both community and lion focused research within communal lands in northwest Namibia. He is passionate about unifying locally-centered and evidence-based approaches for the conservation of lions, and committed to strengthening community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). John joins the Beasley Lab as a part of UGA's new Future Faculty for Inclusive Research Excellence (FFIRE) program. 

Caitlin Kupferman is the Research Coordinator for the Beasley Lab and provides management and support for the many ongoing projects within the lab. Caitlin earned her B.S. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Maine and her M.S. in Natural Resources from the University of Idaho. For her master’s, she examined fisher occupancy and coexistence with native marten and ermine in Southeast Alaska. She has experience working with a variety of species, including red fox, mountain lion, bobcat, bat, bird, wild pig, raccoon, opossum, and small mammals. Her research interests include carnivore ecology, mammal conservation, and anthropogenic effects on wildlife. 

Rhys Medcalfe is a research technician for the Beasley Lab. Rhys recently graduated from the University of Georgia with a bachelor’s degree in wildlife sciences where his thesis explored habitat selection of bats in Georgia. He has also worked for the Tuberville Lab at SREL, tracking released box turtles, dissecting snakes, and head-starting gopher tortoises, and for the USFWS in Louisiana, banding all sorts of birds, removing invasive plants and animals, doing prescribed burns, removing beaver dams and doing habitat improvements. He plans to pursue a master’s degree. His research interests include habitat and resource selection, animal behavior, anthropogenic effects on wildlife and predator prey interactions. 

Briahnna Neily is a wildlife technician for the Beasley Lab based at the Savannah River Ecology Lab. She is currently working as a trapping technician for the wild pig project. Briahnna graduated from the University of South Carolina in December of 2021, where she received a bachelor’s in biology with a minor in marine science. She went on to become a wildlife technician for Minidoka National Wildlife Refuge in 2022, then a wildlife technician for the Grizzly Bear Recovery Program in 2023. In between summer field seasons, Briahnna has worked as a spawning technician for the Bayless Fish Hatchery. Briahnna’s research interests are primarily in large mammal ecology, population dynamics, and genetics. She plans to pursue a master’s degree and eventually a PhD in the future!