Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra, Ph.D.

Aquatic Wild Life Conservation Researcher, Western Africa

Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra is a geographer, specialist in mapping and conservation of biodiversity, particularly birds and their habitat. He did his primary and secondary education in Benin where he obtained his Baccalaureate (Biology-Geology) in 2008. In 2009, he started his university studies at the Department of Geography and Land Management of the University of Abomey-Calavi, where he obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in physical geography in 2013. From 2011 to 2014, he did an academic and professional internship at the Centre for Sustainable Environment in Africa. This internship focused on GIS mapping and environmental management. Just after, he obtained a UNESCO-funded scholarship for a specialised master in Integrated Management of Tropical Forests and Lands at the University of Kinshasa (DRC). During this period, he did academic internships in integrated watershed management and integrated forest management in Luky Reserve, Kisantu Garden and Bombo Luminde Reserve. He obtained his Ph.D. in January 2020 at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Environmental Geoscience in the specialty of Ornithology. As part of his professional work, he was assistant to the programme manager for the Benin Agency of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation; he worked with the National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information as cartographic assistant for the production of cartographic data in support to the preservation and development of forests in Benin; he also assisted the Spatial Observation of Central and West African Forests project as GIS and Cartographer expert. From 2019, he joined the aquatic wildmeat team of OceanCare’s partner organisation BEES under the leadership of Maximin Djondo where he coordinates field research on hunting and the relationship between the riparian population and aquatic fauna including the African manatee, Sitatunga, marine turtles, whale, dolphin, rays and sharks. With this NGO, several monitoring activities of waterbird hunting are also carried out. Sylvestre Chaffra has participated in several conferences and is the author of several scientific publications.