Isla Kirkey is an applied research ecologist with the One Health PROTECT team at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. 

The aim of the One Health PROTECT project is to evaluate the risk of zoonotic pathogen introduction into the United States through the international wildlife trade. The team is conducting the most comprehensive evaluation of the human health risks associated with international trade to date. They provide the science to support evidence-based policy, helping to strengthen national health security while supporting safe and sustainable trade. Their work aids policymakers in reducing the likelihood of future pandemics emerging from wildlife trade. 

Previously, Isla worked for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Invasive Species Council as Director of Communications; as an ecological field technician on a trophic cascade project in the Canadian Rockies; and founded an independent press, where she curated, edited, and designed literary books on environmental and contemplative themes. She is also a published poet.

Isla is interested in a broad range of ecological topics, ranging from landscape level assessments of resilience, food webs, and predation to philosophical and psychological questions about the social roots of ecological crisis and the cultivation of resilience on both individual and collective scales.