Ashley Prout McAvey

Ashley Prout McAvey is a graduate of the Environmental Biology programme at Yale College and holds a Master of Environmental Management (MEM) degree from the Yale School of the Environment. She first visited Africa when she was 16 and saw first-hand the devastating results of human greed on a continent and its wildlife. She immediately fell in love with the beauty of the people, places and wildlife there, and she hopes the movement to ban ivory sales at the state level here in the United States will continue swiftly. She feels indebted to the men and women who have died protecting Africa’s most majestic creatures, and she is fuelled by their sacrifices to spread awareness and action here in the United States, which is, sadly, still today one of the leading markets for ivory.

Ashley founded VermontForWildlife (www.vermontforwildlife.org), an all-volunteer grassroots organization dedicated to educating and raising awareness about the importance of wildlife conservation through public policy and legislative action at the state level. Its mission is to inspire states to take a stand against extinction. After eight years of grassroots advocacy, VermontForWildlife was a key partner in making Vermont the 12th state in the nation to ban the sale of imperiled wildlife parts on October 8, 2020.