Gaya Herrington

End of the road, or changing course away from a cliff? Sustainable futures in transportation

Gaya Herrington is a distinguished researcher specialized in environmental, social, behavioral, and economic fields, emphasizing the interplay between these domains and the requisite transformations for global sustainability. As a published author, she explores the importance of recognizing limits to growth and the potential for increasing global human and ecological well-being by shifting from perpetual growth to meeting human needs within planetary boundaries. Currently serving as the Vice President of Sustainability Research at Schneider Electric, Herrington has previously held roles such as a sustainability consultant at KPMG and a policy advisor to the Dutch government. She is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the United Nations and TED, contributes as a guest lecturer at various universities and as an advisor to the Club of Rome.  In her keynote at the IENE 2024, Herrington challenges the prevailing dogma within the transport sector that increasing mobility and expanding infrastructure hold the key to a prosperous future. She calls for rethinking transportation to cope with the emerging challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and growing inequalities – a theme that will reverberate throughout the conference.
Gaya Herrington
Ladislav Miko
Ladislav Miko

European biodiversity on crossroads - strategically but also literally!

Ladislav Miko accomplished doctoral studies in biology, zoology and ecology. He held high positions at the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety and Directorate-General for Environment of the European Commission. He was also the Minister of the Environment of the Czech Republic and worked at the Czech Environmental Inspectorate. He worked for Slovak Academy of Sciences and currently teaches at the Antwerp University (Belgium) and the Faculty of Science at Charles University in Prague. He is the president of the Ekofilm international film festival and Advisor to the President of the Czech Republic for environmental issues. He lead the Czech and European delegations at the COP 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2022.

Marguerite Trocmé

Lessons learned from 35 years of road ecology

Marguerite Trocmé was born in 1961 grew up in Canada returning to Switzerland at 16. She did her Bachelor of Science in Biology in 1983, specializing in terrestrial ecosystems at Brown University, in Rhode Island USA and then received her Diploma as an environmental Engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique of Lausanne in 1985, specializing in soil science and ecotoxicology. From 1985 to1988 she worked for the World Wildlife Fund Switzerland and for the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach. From 1989 to 2007 she worked at the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, reviewing the impact of infrastructure projects on nature and landscape. She began specializing ever more on transport infrastructure issues, participating in the first fauna passage projects in the early 1990’s and in launching the Swiss defragmentation program. This finally led her in 2008 to move to the Federal Road Office, taking the position of Head of environmental technology. She also participated as of 2002 in writing environmental standards for the Association for road engineers (VSS), presiding the Commission 2.6 on “Green areas and fauna” for 10 years. She was also Chief Editor for the COST 341 action European Review on Habitat Fragmentation du to transport infrastructure. She is involved in many applied research projects, the latest on biodiversity friendly mowing machines, the utilization of AI for censusing invasive plants along roads  and has initiated many environmental guidelines for roads.
Marguerite Trocmé
Rodney Van der Ree
Rodney Van der Ree

Transport ecology – how far have we come, where do we need to go, and how do we get there?

Dr Rodney van der Ree is a National Technical Executive in Ecology at WSP Australia and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of BioSciences at The University of Melbourne, Australia. He is an ecologist with international recognition for his expertise in urban ecology and transport ecology and has undertaken research and collaborated on consultancy projects across Australia and internationally, including Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. He published the international award-winning “Handbook of Road Ecology” (Wiley, 2015), with 63 chapters by more than 100 authors from 25 countries. He has advised the European Union on habitat fragmentation issues due to infrastructure development and has sat on expert advisory committees for the Victorian, Swedish, and New Zealand transport agencies. He has supported the development and growth of transport ecology research and mitigation programs by working directly with the rail and road agencies in South Africa, New Zealand, Myanmar, Singapore, India, Taiwan, China and Japan. He has published extensively, with over 100 refereed scientific publications and hundreds of reports, conference and community presentations, and dozens of media engagements. He has excellent communication and community engagement skills, and often leads workshops and consultation exercises on a range of complex issues.
 
Rodney’s projects at WSP includes site-specific impact assessments and connectivity strategies and plans for transport projects to the development of regional guidelines for fauna sensitive transport infrastructure development. Rodney is also the chair of the Australasian Network for Ecology and Transportation (ANET), is a member of the Scientific and Expert Committee of the Infrastructure and Ecology Network of Europe (IENE) and was a specialist for the Biodiversity and Infrastructure Synergies and Opportunities for European Transport Networks (BISON) project.

Václav Hlaváč
Václav Hlaváč

Fauna protection during transport and energy infrastructure development in the Czech Republic

Václav studied forestry at Mendel University in Brno, but soon after the graduation he started working for the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic – first as a zoologist, later as the director for the Vysočina region. He has devoted his entire professional life to the protection of endangered species. His work on otter protection forced him to deal with the impact of traffic on animals. During his work in rescue programme for peregrine falcon he became familiar with the problem of protecting birds of pray on power lines. He gradually became an expert on the issues of habitat fragmentation, ecological connectivity, the protection of migration corridors and the protection of fauna in contact with transport and energy infrastructure. In his work for nature conservation, he strives for close cooperation between Nature Conservation and the Directorate of Roads and Highways, as well as electricity distributors. He is an author of many methodologies, handbooks, guidelines and scientific articles focused on ecological connectivity, the conflict between fauna protection and transport, and on fauna protection in connection with electricity distribution. He participated in many international projects. He has been a member of IENE since 1999.