We’re delighted to announce the appointment of the Trust’s new Research Director, Professor Melanie Smith, who joined us in February 2023.
Melanie brings a wealth of immensely valuable experience to the Trust, having recently held the position of Vice Principal Academic and Research at UHI Inverness, where she led the university’s research and education programmes at the Inverness campus. With a background in long-term woodland ecology, landscape and river restoration, biodiversity management, and freshwater and wild fisheries management, Melanie will help to drive our research efforts over the next few years into areas where we have gaps in our knowledge, as well as to develop restoration solutions which place salmon as an indicator species at the heart of wider initiatives to restore our nature.
This appointment sees us building on our existing knowledge base and ensuring that evidence is translated into action on the ground, taking a landscape-scale approach to solving the salmon crisis. Melanie’s passion for conserving and restoring our native wildlife is plain to see, and everyone in the AST team is hugely excited to have her on board.
