This is a list, incomplete, of interns and students who have spent several months or even a year or more involved with the Biodiversity and Development Institute. They have learnt a variety of skills: fieldwork, project administration, statistical analysis, writing scientific papers, … , …
Itxaso Quintana was Basque intern in 2019/20. Initially, the main focus of her internship was the monitoring of the African Oystercatchers on Robben Island. She was supposed to be here for six months from December 2019 to May 2020, but she was captured here by the Covid pandemic and eventually left in October. During the Covid period she coordinated the BDI’s Citizen Scientist Hours, and there is a collection of 131 videos on YouTube. She returned to help with the oystercatcher monitoring for the following two summers. She is now Plant Health Officer at Botanic Gardens Conservation International, based at Kew in London. Itxaso helps coordinate the International Plant Sentinel Network, supporting activities related to pest monitoring and plant biosecurity. Google Scholar
Rio Button, having completed her MSc in Conservation Biology at UCT, spent the summer of 2019/20 doing the monitoring of the African Oystercatchers on Robben Island. She subsequently trained as science communicator, where one of her course assignments resulted in her writing an article about Les Underhill in the Daily Maverick. She is passionate about coral reefs, and is currently completing a PhD in the School of the Environment at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Her topic is Understanding the role of coastal pollution in the health, resilience, and recovery of coral reefs, and her PhD fieldwork is taking her to the coral reefs of the Solomon Islands and Great Barrier Reef. Google Scholar
Jon Blanco completed his Bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of the Basque Country and his Master’s degree in Biodiversity and Conservation in Tropical Regions at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (Madrid). His Master’s thesis quantified the effort that Great Tits expended while travelling to collect nest material, and related this to the body condition and aggressive behaviour of the tits. He gained work experience at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and the University of Sheffield in the UK, assisting with a research project on the Monk Parakeet, developing a network which opened doors to his PhD.
He was part of the team which monitored the breeding of African Oystercatchers in the 2021/22 breeding season. He spent several months in the Karoo in the autumn of 2022 helping to investigate the feasibility of undertaking a diversity of monitoring projects including waterbird surveys on a farm dam, dung beetle monitoring, fixed point photography, bird ringing and others.
After his return to Spain, he almost immediately started his PhD at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, focusing on the ecological interactions and population management of the invasive Monk Parakeet in urban environments. His research explored the balance between conflict and coexistence with native urban birds, as well as the parakeets’ role in pathogen transmission. He successfully defended his thesis in September 2026, earning a Cum Laude distinction.
Shortly after becoming Dr. Blanco, he was employed as an environmental technician by Grupo Tragsa in Madrid, collaborating with the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. In this role, he is working to implement Spain’s CITES convention commitments, trying to regulate the international commerce of species, primarily focusing on parrots and raptors used in falconry, LinkedIn
Josu Meléndez Arteaga is a biologist from the Basque Country, specialising in marine ecology. He earned a BSc in Biology at the University of the Basque Country. He was awarded an Erasmus Mundus scholarship to do an MSc in Marine Environment and Resources at a three-institute consortium (University of Bordeaux, France, University of Leige, Belgium and Plentzia Marine Station, Spain). His Master’s thesis was titled Site and species related variation in population development of three gull species: The importance of resource availability. During his MSc he also did an internship in the Arctic Ecosystem Ecology Research Group at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Along with Jon Blanco, he spent several months in the Karoo in the autumn of 2022 helping to investigate the feasibility of undertaking a diversity of monitoring projects. The main tasks consisted of monitoring the nocturnal mammals of the Karoo, and conducting weekly censuses of the aquatic bird community on the farm dam. Other activities involved bird ringing, atlasing, fixed point photography and preparing traps. Josu discovered a Red-billed Oxpecker
Back home, Josu started a PhD at the Marine Research Institute of the Basque Research & Technology Alliance (locally known as AZTI) . He is studying the role of tropical tunas in the marine food web and the impact of fisheries in their populations and associated ecosystem. There is a blog about the project here. LinkedIn
Before coming to South Africa in 2022, Melisa Bal had qualified as a biology school teacher, and followed that up with an MSc in ornithology at Istanbul University, in Turkey. The title of her thesis was Spring and Autumn Migration Dynamics of Acrocephalus Species from Kızılırmak Delta. She did the fieldwork for her thesis based at the Cernek Bird Ringing Station in northern Turkey, on the Black Sea, and qualified as a bird ringer during this period. She also led a conservation project on Northern Lapwings funded by the Rufford Foundation. The natural grasslands of the delta had been replaced by rice fields, and this had become the breeding habitat of the lapwings. This project combined field monitoring with activities to raise awareness among local communities and reduce the impact of agricultural disturbance to breeding success.
During her time at the BDI from her main responsibility, from February to May 2022, was to help establish a bird ringing station at New Holme in the Karoo and she undertook a lot of bird ringing there. Later in 2022, she worked as a project coordinator for a breeding ecology research for Chestnut-banded and Kittlitz’s Plovers with the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.
Since returning to Turkey, Melisa has worked as a project manager for an ecological consultancy company and coordinated bird and bat monitoring projects for wind and solar energy projects. More recently, she has branched out on her own, and organises guided birdwatching activities for schools, individuals and companies, alongside helping schools and students develop biodiversity projects. Her aim is to share her knowledge and passion for birds and nature, through birdwatching, biodiversity education and citizen science. She wants to help people explore nature, get to know it better, and contribute to its protection. LinkedIn
Maite Gonzalez is a Venezuelan-Basque biologist with a lifelong curiosity about both the natural world and human nature. She studied Biology at the University of the Basque Country, combining her studies with experience in aquaculture, microbiology and as a guide at the Basque Coast Geopark. Her interest in nature, people and different cultures has taken her around the world, from volunteering in sea turtle conservation in Costa Rica and completing an internship in El Salvador to spending nearly three years in Australia, where she became a certified Divemaster.
After returning to the Basque Country, she pursued an MSc in Environmental Contamination and Toxicology and joined the BDI in January 2023 through the Global Training Programme. During her internship, she monitored the breeding success of African Oystercatchers on Robben Island, a project that became the basis of her master’s thesis.
Following her time at the BDI, Maite worked in environmental consultancy and volunteered in special education, experiences that strengthened her belief in the importance of making science accessible and inspiring others to care about the natural world. After completing a master’s degree in Teacher Training in 2025, she joined Kutxa Fundazioa as a Social Impact and Community Engagement Officer, where she develops initiatives connecting people, science and nature, including bringing the Forest School approach to schools across Gipuzkoa.
Amaia Sagarzazu was Basque intern from December 2023 to May 2924. She had completed a BSc degree in Biology at the University of the Basque Country,with the best academic record of her class. She followed this up with a master’s degree in Drug Research, Development,Control and Innovation at the University of Granada. Her thesis was titled Development of biomimetic nanoparticles for the targeted treatment of triple negative breast cancer. She then decided she wanted to get back into real biology and successfully applied for the internship with the Global Training Programme. She quickly developed the knack of finding African Oystercatcher nests on Robben Island, and learnt bird ringing skills.
Karis Daniel completed her undergraduate studies at Wilson College in Pennsylvania, USA; she grabbled an opportunity to study wildlife ecology and conservation at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Her PhD, The scientific and sociocultural value of citizen science, was awarded the Purcell Prize at UCT for the best postgraduate thesis in Zoology in 2025. She invested a lot of time and effort in BDI projects, and completed training as a bird ringer. She led the oystercatcher monitoring on Robben Island in the summer of 2023/24. She is now a postdoctoral researcher in the JustURBAN project, a collaborative initiative between the University of the Western Cape, Rhodes University, and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. LinkedIn
Amandine Doré did her BSc at the University of Montpellier in France, and an MSc at Lund University in Sweden in 2019. Her thesis was titled: Behavioural ecology and choice of foraging sites by male Great Snipes outside the leks: implications for conservation management.
For the next six years, her main focus was on bird ringing, and she grabbed opportunities in Sweden, mainly Falsterbo Bird Observatory, Denmark, Latvia, Morocco, Equatorial Guinea, and South Africa. Here she was fieldworker for the Sociable Weaver Project near Kimberley, she completed the FGASA Level 1 field guide course, and qualified as a Safring bird ringer. She assisted us with African Oystercatcher monitoring on Robben Island in the summer of 2003/04. She participated in multiple ringing expeditions, providing guidance and support to local trainees, helping them develop the skills they need to obtain their ringing licenses. She is now doing a PhD at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her fieldwork is in Senegal, and she is doing research on the foraging ecology of Black-tailed Godwits. LinkedIn
Iñaki Romero was intern for the first half of 2025. supported by the Global Training Programme of the Basque Country in Spain. He had a BSc majoring in Biology and two Master’s degrees: one in Teacher Training for High School and one in Biodiversity of Tropical Areas and their Conservation. He also had a broad set of relevant experiences, including time spent at the Florida Museum of Natural History, USA, helping with the digitization of the herpetological collection.
He helped us do the detective work to find actual copies of all papers, book chapters, reports, undergraduate projects and postgraduate theses relating to the biodiversity of Robben Island. We compiled a catalogue of pdfs of these documents. He also did fieldwork on Robben Island and at ringing events. While he was in Cape Town, he took at few days off to join his father in Tanzania and they climbed Kilimanjaro. He was delighted to discover that there was an active Orienteering Club in Cape Town (there was not one in Florida!). He plans to return to ride the Cape Town Cycle Tour, a 109 km cycle race around the Cape Peninusla.
Immediately on his return to Spain, he started a PhD at the University of Barcelona. His research involves understanding the interactions between species’ traits and the environment, assessing climatic equilibrium in the native ranges of bird species, and evaluating whether that equilibrium (or disequilibrium) is structured by life history and behavioural flexibility. He is involved in herpetological projects in the Basque Country working with Aranzadi Science Society. LinkedIn
Once Dembo Jatta had finished the coursework for his Conservation Biology MSc at UCT, he became a regular member of our bird ringing groups, as a skilled ringer. He played a valuable role in environmental education initiatives, connecting learners to nature through bird ringing. He helped extensively with the breeding monitoring of African Oystercatchers on Robben Island in the summer of 2025/26. Prior to studying in Cape Town, he had completed a BA(Hons) in Wildlife Conservationat the African Leadership University in Rwanda. He had trained as ringer at the Kartong Bird Observatory in The Gambia, where he had been actively involved with ringing since 2013, when he was a teenager. He has a bird ringing permit issued by the British Trust for Ornithology. He has played a leadership role at the bird observatory, training visiting ringers in the identification, ageing and sexing of the resident birds of The Gambia, and led birding tours.
He has recently started a PhD, registered at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, doing research on the conservation needs of the Critically Endangered Rüppell’s Vulture in West and East Africa. The special focus of his PhD is on the foraging ecology of this species. There is a description of the project here. LinkedIn
Achot Ginosian studied biodiversity and ecology for his bachelor’s degree at Aix-Marseille University in France. He continued to do a Master’s degree at the Pythéas Institute, Aix-Marseille University. His first-year Master’s project was a behavioural study of the White-throated Dipper on a river system in southern France. His second-year Master’s project was based in the BDI, supervised by Les Underhill and Dieter Oschadleus. He did an analysis of the annual timing of primary moult for Cape Weaver, Southern Masked Weaver and Southern Red Bishop. He related the timing of moult each year to rainfall and temperature records obtained from ERA5, the leading database for global weather records. Achot participated enthusiastically in bird ringing activites, and by time he left he had ringed 525 birds of 102 species. Within a few weeks of returning to France, he headed off to New Caledonia, in the Pacific Ocean east of Australia and a few thousand kilometres north of New Zealand. He is working on a scientific study to monitor the impact of forest degradation and hunting pressure on the Goliath Imperial Pigeon, the largest member of the family Columbidae (doves and pigeons). This species is 2.5 times as heavy as a Speckled Pigeon, is endemic to New Caledonia, and is Near-threatened LinkedIn
Joël Daniel-Roux has a BSc in Biological and Environmental Sciences from the University of Réunion. The internship he did in the BDI contributed the final credits he needed to complete this degree. His CV says: “I’m passionate about birds, population monitoring and ecology in general. The aim of the internship is to expand my scientific knowledge and improve my fieldwork competencies in a professional context. I am working towards a career in ornithology, and have a personal goal to become a professional ringer. I’m a birder, able to identify 500 species in Europe by sight and sound, and 100 species in Réunion Island. I also enjoy developing my identification skills in other taxa – dragonflies, butterflies, mammals, amphibians, …” For his internship in Cape Town, Joël undertook an analysis of the primary moult of the Red-winged Starling. This turned into a fascinating study, because this is one of a small number of species that overlap breeding and moult. They achieve this by moulting slowly; the primaries take five months, a moult period nearly 40% longer than expected for a bird this size. Outside of his internship, Joël did as much birding and bird ringing as he could, and ringed about 350 birds of about 40 species during his five months here. Within a few weeks of his return to France, Joël started an MSc in Biodiversity at the University of Rennes. He also painted, played the guitar and piloted paragliders. LinkedIn