Michael Balinga is Team Lead for Combatting Wildlife Trafficking in USAID’s West Africa Biodiversity and Low Emissions Development (WABiLED) Program. He has 22 years of experience in ecological, forest livelihoods and forest governance research conducted in the Congo Basin and Upper Guinea Rainforests, as well as in the West African Sahel. He has strong experience in regional and global environmental policy processes especially with implementation of the CITES and UNCCC. He hails from Bokito in Cameroon and has a Forestry and Wildlife Engineering degree from the University of Dschang.