Christiaan van der Hoeven is a biologist with a specialisation in Ethology (animal behaviour) and wildlife management. He has spent several years in Ivory Coast and Cameroon studying behaviour of Colobine monkeys and elephants, respectively. He has worked for the World Bank/Tropenbos project in Campo-Ma’an in South Cameroon at the start of this century, surveying wildlife populations for the development of management plans. He obtained a PhD in 2007 in Wildlife management at Wageningen University, at the Resource Ecology Group headed by Prof. dr. Herbert Prins.
He has worked at IUCN Netherlands Committee, for the Small Grants Program, which was designed to support small Conservation NGO’s in Asia, Africa and South America. He has supported dozens of NGO’s and visited them in the field to assist in growing and improving their capacity.
Since 2011 he works at WWF-Netherlands, as advisor Ecological Networks and Species conservation at the Conservation department. His portfolio covers Southern Africa, Wildlife trade, and the Giant Panda in China.