Staff
Margot Bass is Staff President of Finding Species. She is the founder and served as Executive Director for six years, and is the Vice President of the Board of Directors. She is the coordinator from Finding Species for the LeafSnap project, through the Native Plant Program.
Ms. Bass has managed conservation research and campaign projects for fifteen years, and has expertise in field botany. She has identified over 20,000 trees in the Smithsonian Center for Tropical Forest Science plot in Ecuador, has drafted interim management guides for sensitive plants on the Inyo National Forest, and has taken several thousand photographs of tropical tree species. Ms. Bass has worked with conservation groups, including the Center for International Environmental Law and Fundación Jatun Sacha. At Finding Species, she created a network of over 50 scientists who successfully collaborated to promote Ecuadorian Amazon conservation.
Ms. Bass has an M.S. in Sustainable Development & Conservation Biology from the University of Maryland, and a B.A. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She was awarded the Sigma Xi Undergraduate Ecology Research Prize for her thesis on mycorrhizal fungi, She recently received the Hotchkiss Alumni Association's Community Service Award for her work at Finding Species.
Margot Bass
Gorky F. Villa Muñoz is a Staff Botanist at Finding Species. He is the lead botanist for Finding Species on the LeafSnap project, through the Native Plant Program. He locates, identifies, collects and photographs plants throughout the United States.
Mr. Villa brings to Finding Species over fifteen years of field experience in identifying tropical and temperate plants. He has worked on forest- and herbarium-based projects for The Catholic University of Ecuador, The Field Museum (Chicago), and for the Center for Tropical Forest Science of the Smithsonian Institution. Mr. Villa helped establish and has supervised the field staff in two Smithsonian Institution long-term tropical forest research plots—in Yasuni National Park and the Gamba Complex. He helped build and manage the databases for these plots, with information on the identification and location of thousands of individual trees. In the Yasuní plot, he and field team members identified over 152,000 trees representing over 1,100 species in a 25-hectare area, in a forest so dense, so poorly known, and of such high species diversity that the identifications required eight years of field and herbarium study to complete. Mr. Villa also held a Darwin Fellowship at the Department of Botany of the Natural History Museum (London), to document the ecological (non-pharmaceutical) knowledge and cultural and musical lore of the Huaorani people regarding their relationship with trees. He has also produced over 5,000 photographs of tropical trees.
Mr. Villa received a combined B.A. and M.SC. Degree in Biological Sciences from Lviv State University of Ivan Franko, Ukraine. He has working fluency in English and Russian in addition to his native Spanish.
Bejat McCracken is the Director of Photography and Programs for Finding Species. She photographs species throughout the United States, processes photographs and devises new plans for efficiency. She has accompanied and led numerous scientific expeditions to the Ecuadorian Amazon to photo-document amphibians, reptiles, insects and orchids since 1997, spending 5 years dedicated to her work in the field. Her collection of photographs contains around 60,000 photographs with many new species and undescribed species. Working with scientists particularly in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador, she has provided compelling photographs to assist in protecting this fragile ecosystem.
She serves as the artist, photographer, field assistant and treasurer of The Tadpole Organization (www.tadpoleorg.org). Her work can be seen in various publications like Science Magazine, PlosOne, Phyllomedusa and American Museum Novitates, to name just a few. She has received many awards for her photographs from such organizations as National Wildlife Federation, NAAEE and Albert I. Pierce Foundation and various other organizations, where she is featured on their websites, publications, books, calendars and pamphlets.
A graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, TX, she received her BFA in painting in 1997 upon which she received many fellowships and grants to travel to the Amazon and throughout South America. Her work as an artist (www.bejat.com) has ranged from paintings to murals and sculptures regarding the environment to evoke awareness and compassion, working with children individually and in local schools to educate them through art in various ways like murals, presentations and private art lessons. She exhibits throughout the United States in personal collections, galleries and alternative spaces and curated her own gallery in Austin from 2002-2008 called B Studio.
Martin Bustamante collaborates with Finding Species. He creates new projects through his Ecuadorian outreach and partnerships where Finding Species immense catalogue of Ecuadorian photographs can play an important role in science, education, and conservation. Mr. Bustamante brings ten years of experience in photographing Ecuador’s biodiversity and landscapes.
Photographs by Mr. Bustamante have appeared in books, magazines, newspapers, and websites, and been the featured works in three photographic volumes. He served as lead editor and lead photographer for the Finding Species book Ecuador in Harmony [Armonia Ecuador]. He is co-author of the popular photographic volume, Frogs: Ecuador’s Diverse World of Frogs [Sapos: Ecuador Sapodiverso].
Mr. Bustamante is also among Ecuador’s recognized herpetologists, focused on amphibians and reptiles of the Western Amazon: their diversity, distribution, systematic, and conservation problems. He has conducted field inventories and other herpetology research in Ecuador and Peru. Mr. Bustamante has taught university courses on herpetology in Quito, Ecuador. His publications include new species descriptions, various book chapters and publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Martín Bustamante
Ms. Keenan is an Associate Botanist with Finding Species. She writes the Plant Profile texts for Finding Species that appear in LeafSnap.
Ms. Keenan is Vice President of the Maryland Native Plant Society and a Maryland Master Gardener. She also serves on the board of The Orangutan Conservancy. Ms. Keenan has a Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from The George Washington University and a certificate in Natural History Field Studies from the Graduate School/Audubon Naturalist Society.
Linda Keenan
