The Dolomites in Autumn

Jessica claims she started her lifelong love of plants through having a field guide as a favourite picture book at an early age! She went on to study Botany at Cambridge University, specialising in ecology and pollen analysis, and has been involved in a variety of botanical survey projects for the National Trust and a local Wildlife Trust. Jessica is based in Oxford where she now works as a hospital chaplain. However, plants remain a passion, together with birds, butterflies and other aspects of natural history. She loves sharing her enthusiasms with others, and has travelled with Naturetrek over a number of years, first as a client and now a leader.

Simone Giachello is a naturalist and passionate photographer from northern Italy, with a soft spot for herpetofauna and montane habitats. Born in Milan, his love for nature has been strong since childhood but truly blossomed during his university years when he approached nature photography and began traveling around Italy, discovering a, for him, unexpected biodiversity. After completing his master’s degree in Natural Sciences, he couldn’t resist the call of the mountains and moved from the city to a village in the heart of the Bergamasque Alps.

Nature conservation has played a key role in shaping his career and life. Simone works as an ecologist at the University of Milan, where he studies how high-altitude ecosystems and amphibian populations are impacted by anthropogenic threats such as climate change, habitat degradation, and invasive species, with the aim of developing effective conservation strategies. He loves merging scientific research with hands-on field experience to raise awareness in the general public by showcasing the beauty of nature through photography and guided excursions and trips.

His work and passion have taken him around Italy and the world, from the cave systems of Sardinia to the Sahel of Mauritania, from the snowy peaks of the Alps to the Danube Delta in Romania, from the cloud forests of Costa Rica to the desert of southern Morocco. Whether it's a brief one-day excursion or a three-week expedition, he thrives on exploring remote areas in search of rare and elusive species but also loves to rediscover and appreciate the beauty of the most common ones we have right outside our door. Yet, what he cherishes most is not just finding the target species, but experiencing the immense variety of habitats that blanket our planet.