Katie-jo Luxton is the RSPB’s Executive Director of Global Conservation leading the RSPB’s mission to save species, protect habitats and restore landscapes to help end the nature and climate emergencies and inspire others to do the same.   

She leads RSPB’s conservation functions – science, ecology, species recovery, policy and advice alongside the RSPB’s international work developing exemplars of conservation delivery and supporting capacity development in local partners, with a focus on BirdLife partners on the African- Eurasian Flyway.

Key work areas currently include:

· Evidence-based advocacy and collaborations for change in our food and farming system so that nature and climate- friendly farming is supported by UK public policy, farmers are supported to transition and farmland bird and other wildlife can recover.

· Tackling severe declines in seabird populations through a combination of advocacy for reducing fisheries pressures, new marine protected areas and better management for existing ones and an ambitious programme of restoring seabird breeding islands through eradicating invasive predators. We are also driving for collaboration with offshore wind to avoid deployment in the most sensitive areas for seabirds and developing strategic compensatory measures for unavoidable impacts.

· Developing exemplars of landscape scale nature recovery and nature-based solutions to climate change to restore threatened habitats and species and build ecological resilience in the UK and internationally – key examples include 5 Landscape Recovery pilot projects in England and the Greater Gola Rainforest programme in Sierra Leone and Liberia and the Harapan Rainforest in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Katie-jo has worked for the RSPB since 1999 in a variety of conservation policy and delivery roles and was Director of RSPB Cymru leading the delivery of the RSPB's strategy in Wales from 2011- 2021 where she built a track record in developing ambitious partnerships to deliver landscape scale restoration and to engage new audiences in nature. Major projects she led or was involved in include the Celtic Rainforest partnership, the Living Levels Landscape Partnership, Giving Nature a Home in Cardiff and Natur Am Byth partnership.

A graduate of Cambridge University (Girton College), she is married with two daughters and lives in Cardiff. When not working she is mainly to be found outside in nature, walking or allotment gardening, or enjoying live music and poetry.