Hello! I’m Sarita, an environmental consultant specialising in the restoration of natural ecosystems for community resilience and planetary health. I am also an islander (born in the Canary Islands), with British-Indian roots, and have carried out much of my work on islands.

Over the last 10 years my work and research has taken me to places across the Earth — such as the Galápagos Islands, Borneo, Greece, and Iceland — where I have worked to understand, protect, and restore natural and cultural landscapes.

Below, I use a Venn diagram to capture my disciplines of expertise and how they intersect. Feel free to click on the different sections to learn more about my work in those areas!

Examples of my past work:

• Designing urban nature restoration measures to improve ecological connectivity and community wellbeing in urban open spaces, working with Spanish municipalities to align city plans with EU Nature Restoration Regulation policies.

• Scientific and technical communications for the nature data company Cecil Earth, writing and editing articles about partnerships and writing dataset documentation, to improve access to environmental information.

• Interviewing urban and rural gardeners in their home gardens about their gardening practices, identifying the personal value of home gardening to help inform green space management (I presented these findings at two conferences and also wrote a book chapter about my work)

• Mapping and assessing 300 street trees for Reykjavik’s Municipal Environmental Planning department to create a tree management plan to increase tree diversity, ensure pedestrian safety and improve climate resilience in line with the City’s and Sustainability Goals for 2030.

• Managing a 47,000-specimen collection and database of dried plants in the Galápagos Islands, as well as growing this plant collection by leading botanical surveys in 14 sites in 7 islands across the archipelago.

• Working with the ecological restoration, reforestation, and sustainable agriculture project Galapagos Verde 2050 to replant native and endemic species using water-saving technologies across the Galápagos Islands.

• Carrying out tropical conservation fieldwork at Danau Girang Field Centre in Borneo, tracking nocturnal mammal habitats using radio tags, ringing and monitoring birds, and studying pangolin and elephant diets.

• Co-founding GEnHub (Galapagos Entrepreneurship Hub), a community of professionals working towards sustainability in the Galápagos Islands, and a space to meet, discuss and share, set objectives and seek advice.

I am always happy to chat, and talk about shared interests and/or potential collaborations!

Research in island land management practices

Urban nature and EU NRR

Sustainable planning in island cities

Island studies