Mr Roland MELISCH

Director Strategic Partnerships / Europe, TRAFFIC

Since 2007 Roland is working for TRAFFIC, helping to ensure that wildlife trade is not a threat to the conservation of nature. He is TRAFFIC’s Director for Strategic Partnerships with a focus on European partners. In the past, he held managerial roles supervising TRAFFIC’s programme implementation in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Born in Austria, Roland studied Biology, with an emphasis on tropical ecology and development policy. He has more than 25 years of professional experience in conservation and trade in natural resources, working for the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM), Wetlands International in Indonesia, and for WWF Germany’s global conservation programme. Roland has intensively followed the CBD deliberations on ‘sustainable use’ since its very early days and is a member of IUCN’s Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group. He also serves as Vice-Chair of the Collaborative Partnership on Sustainable Wildlife Management (CPW).