Peter Paul van Dijk

Peter Paul van Dijk (born 1967) is a Dutch herpetologist and conservationist. His main focus is on the freshwater turtles of Southeast Asia.

Biography Van Dijk grew up in the Netherlands. In 1986, he moved to Ireland, where he studied Zoology at the University College Galway. He received his B.Sc. with honors in 1990 and continued with a research-based Ph.D. program, for which he received a postgraduate and travel scholarship from the National University of Ireland. During this period, he worked as a research associate at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, conducting ecological studies of the Elongated tortoise (Indotestudo elongata) in western Thailand. Alongside his doctoral work, Van Dijk was involved in numerous conservation-oriented research projects in Thailand focusing on forest and freshwater biodiversity and wetland management.

In 1998, Van Dijk earned his Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland with a dissertation titled The natural history of the elongated tortoise Indotestudo elongata (Blyth, 1853) (Reptilia: Testudines) in a hill forest mosaic in western Thailand with notes on sympatric turtle species. During his postdoctoral period, he continued conservation fieldwork in Thailand, including serving as lead implementer for a commissioned study on the status of land and freshwater turtles for the IUCN. He also participated in the third environmental impact assessment for the proposed Kaeng Sua Ten Dam. Concerned about the growing exploitation of turtles across Asia, Van Dijk transitioned from academia to the non-governmental conservation sector in December 1999. He applied for and was appointed as Senior Programme Officer at TRAFFIC Southeast Asia (TSEA), the regional branch of the global TRAFFIC network, a joint wildlife trade monitoring program of the IUCN and the WWF, based in Malaysia and covering all eleven ASEAN member states. His first assignment was to participate in a regional workshop on the trade of Asian turtles, form a working group to assess the conservation status of Asian land and freshwater turtles for the IUCN Red List, and edit the meeting proceedings. The resulting communiqué and recommendations were instrumental in expanding regulatory measures for freshwater turtles under the CITES.