Who We Are?

Dr. Lindsay Young is the Executive Director and co-founder Pacific Rim Conservation, a non-profit organization dedicated to conserving, and preventing the extinction of, imperiled birds throughout the Pacific. Lindsay’s main focus is on the “not net loss” initiative which involves creating and restoring island ecosystems that are resilient to the effects of climate change, matching acre for acre what is being lost to sea level rise throughout the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. A world expert on seabirds, she is a member of the IUCN species specialist and IUCN species reintroduction groups and is a recipient of the Endangered Species Recovery Champion Award from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, a Special Achievement Award from the Pacific Seabird Group, the Koa Award for Conservation Leadership from the Conservation Council for Hawaii and the 2022 recipient of the Ralph Schreiber Conservation Award from the American Ornithological Society. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she fell in love with seabirds while completing a semester abroad program on a ship sailing to 11 countries and watching a single albatross follow their ship for more than a thousand miles. She has a BSc in Zoology from the University of British Columbia, and an MS and Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Hawaii. She currently serves as an affiliate graduate faculty member at the University of Hawai`i Natural Resources and Environmental Management Department as well as the University of the Philippines Institute for Biology as a 2023 Fulbright US Scholar recipient. Lindsay was a faculty member on the Fall 2018 voyage of Semester at Sea through Colorado State University and a visiting faculty member at Hokkaido University in 2019. Based in Hawaii, she spends her time with her own flock of children, cats, dog and guinea pigs.