Becky Harrison is the at-risk species coordinator for the Southeast region with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She has 25 years of experience in species conservation and adaptative management and has worked within diverse partner groups to create unified frameworks for strategic conservation planning and delivery.

She has degrees in Zoology and Wildlife Biology from Michigan State University (B.Sc.), Utah State University (M.Sc.) and North Carolina State University (PhD). Her post-doctoral work at University of Georgia was supported through a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. This research used the monarch butterfly as a model system of migration to investigate how animal movement patterns are influenced by infectious disease. 

Becky joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2011 and has worked across programs including the South Atlantic Inventory & Monitoring Network, the National Wildlife Refuge System, Ecological Services, and Partners in Flight on collaborative conservation management projects across taxa including pollinators, red wolves, sea turtles, and migratory birds. She also serves as the species recovery lead for the endangered St. Francis satyr butterfly at Fort Bragg. She has collaborated with U.S. Army personnel, natural resource managers, and researchers on conservation management issues there since 2003. Her commitment to negotiating critical resource management decisions has recognized with several awards including the Secretary of the Interior’s Commendation award in 2017.

Matt Elliott is Chief of the Wildlife Conservation Section of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Wildlife Resources Division, where he has worked since 2004. He has a background in landscape ecology, biogeography, and herpetology, and is interested in land protection and ecological restoration, particularly of longleaf pine-sandhills ecosystems. He is a past co-chair of the Gopher Tortoise Council, and a co-author of the “Amphibians and Reptiles of Georgia” book.  He has a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources from the University of the South, and a master’s in forestry and environmental studies from Yale University. He lives in Athens, GA with his wife Stacy, and has two adult children, Josie and Jack.