Karla Pound

Karla has been an Expedition Leader and Naturalist with National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions for the past three years, leading voyages throughout the South Pacific and beyond, including the Kimberley, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Antarctica and the Mediterranean.

After studying zoology, Karla began her career as a zookeeper specializing in exotic reptiles and arachnids. During this time, she contributed to a lifesaving antivenom program by milking funnel-web spiders. Drawn to remote Australia, she transitioned into naturalist guiding through Luxury Lodges of Australia, working across some of the country’s most remote landscapes.

Karla’s varied field experience includes leading camel tours through the Red Centre, teaching bush tucker as a ranger in the Kimberley, presenting birds of prey and wildlife on Kangaroo Island, working as a commercial skipper on the Great Barrier Reef and supporting saltwater crocodile conservation in the Northern Territory. She has also guided during the red crab migration on Christmas Island, driven airboats through Northern Territory floodplains, worked as a remote fishing guide and flown scenic helicopter tours over the Bungle Bungle Range.

Internationally, Karla has volunteered with orangutan rehabilitation in Borneo, rescued elephants in Thailand, dolphin research at Monkey Mia and sea turtle rescue in the Whitsundays. She has also become a survival instructor, teaching bushcraft, resilience and remote-area survival to civilians and military personnel.
Her latest endeavor is rowing 3,000 nautical miles across the Atlantic Ocean in the World’s Toughest Row.