Dr. Petracca heads the Spatial and Population Ecology of Carnivores (SPEC) Lab at CKWRI, which focuses broadly on quantitative approaches to inform carnivore ecology and conservation. A large part of her Professorship will prioritize recovery of ocelots in South Texas. Dr. Petracca was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Washington, where she led the development of a spatially-explicit projection model to assess gray wolf population dynamics and progress toward recovery goals in Washington State. She also led work to optimize the monitoring of tufted puffins across their North American range. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Petracca spent nearly a decade as a Conservation Scientist at Panthera, focusing mainly on the spatial ecology of jaguars in Central America and lions in sub-Saharan Africa.
