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Elizabeth Terk

Director of Conservation Science and Planning, Micronesia

Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia

Headshot of Elizabeth Terk.

Elizabeth Terk Director of Conservation Science and Planning in Micronesia. © Courtesy Elizabeth Terk

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Marine protected areas, fisheries, community-based management

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Biography

Elizabeth Terk is the Conservation Director for TNC’s Micronesia and Polynesia Program. As conservation director she oversees all aspects of the Micronesia’s conservation program and provides  strategic leadership and support for TNC’s conservation planning work and establishes overall conservation priorities for the program and/or major initiatives. She has worked for TNC since 2013 and was initially hired as the Protected Area Advisor for Micronesia. She is originally from New York City but has called Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia home since 2005. She has worked in conservation in Micronesia since 2007. First as the Deputy Director of the Conservation Society of Pohnpei and then as the Conservation Program Manager for the Micronesia Conservation Trust. She holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her main areas of focus are designing resilient marine protected area networks, providing community members and resource managers with the capacity to implement and manage protected areas, and building capacity for implementation of Nature Based Solutions to climate change. She provides conservation planning support using the Open Standards across Micronesia, has helped develop communality-based climate change adaptation planning tools for the region and helped develop a protected area adaptive management course.

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  • Terk, E. and N. Knowlton (2010) The Role of SCUBA Diver User Fees as a Source of Sustainable Funding for Coral Reef Marine Protected Areas. Published in Biodiversity. 
  • Weeks et al. (2016) Using Reef Fish Movement to Inform Marine Reserve Design. Published in Journal of Applied Ecology. 
  • Harborne et al. (2018) Modelling and Mapping Regional -scale Patterns of Fishing Impact and fish Stocks to Support Coral-Reef Management in Micronesia. Published in Diversity and Distributions. 
  • Mcleod et. Al (2019) Lesson from the Pacific Islands -Adapting to Climate Change by Supporting Social and Ecological Resilience. Published in Frontiers in Marine Science.
  • Anderson et al. (2021) Trait Groups as Management Entities in a Complex, Multi-species Reef Fishery. Published in Conservation Biology.
  • Anderson Et al. (2022) Co-variation of fish and coral traints in relation to habitat. Published in Coral Reefs.

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