Jane & Whitney Harris Lecture Series
2008, Dr. Jerry F. Franklin
“The Old-Growth Forests of the Pacific Northwest: An Overview of Advances in Scientific Understanding and Conservation Policies”
Dr. Jerry F. Franklin is the professor of ecosystem analysis at the College of Forest Resources, University of Washington in Seattle. He completed his B.S. and M.S. in forest management at Oregon State University and completed his Ph.D. in botany at Washington State University. He is director of the Wind River Canopy Crane Research Facility and a co-principal investigator of a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to plan a National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). NEON is a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecology. He has published extensively on aspects of forest ecology, forest management and biodiversity conservation. His work has been recognized through numerous awards including the Heinz Award for the Environment and the LaRoe Award for lifetime scientific contributions to conservation biology from the Society for Conservation Biology.
2007, Dr. John N. Thompson
“Coevolution on Our Rapidly Changing Earth”
Dr. John N. Thompson Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz completed his B.A. at Washington & Jefferson College, Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Urbana. His research, focused on how coevolution between species organizes the earth's biodiversity, aims to understand how these interactions are genetically and ecologically organized across broad geographic landscapes and how they connect biological communities. He is also Director of the STEPS Institute for Innovation in Environmental Research. This interdisciplinary group was established to facilitate environmental research and investigate human impacts on the global environment that have occurred over the past century. He has published widely on coevolution, plant-animal interactions and biodiversity conservation including his recent book: “The geographic mosaic of coevolution” (University of Chicago Press, 2006).
2006, Dr. Jeffrey P. Bonner
“From Fence to Field: The Changing Role of Zoos in Conservation.”
In April 2002, Jeffrey P. Bonner was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Saint Louis Zoo. He directs one of the few free zoos in the nation, with close to 3 million visitors each year, and considered to be one of the top zoos in the world. He served as President and CEO of the Indianapolis Zoo and White River Gardens from 1993 to 2002 and before that was Vice President for Research and Special Projects at the St. Louis Science Center. Dr. Bonner received his B.A. in anthropology from the University of Missouri–Columbia in 1975. He received his M.A. and M. Phil. degrees in anthropology from Columbia University in New York in 1977 and 1979, along with his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1982. He is a Burgess Fellow, Traveling Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, President’s Fellow and a recipient of the National Research Service Award. Dr. Bonner is the author of numerous articles and has written a book based on his doctoral research in northern India. His latest book, “Sailing with Noah” was published in 2006. He serves on numerous national and international boards including the World Zoo Conservation Strategy, the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, and the International Center for Tropical Ecology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He was recently elected chair of the Madagascar Fauna Group and chair of the International Species Information System, and a Council member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
2004, Dr. Terese Hart "Why conservation—and basic botany—must continue in the
war torn center of Africa."
Dr. Hart first visited what was then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic
of Congo, in 1974 as a Peace Corps volunteer. She returned to do her Ph.D.
research on regeneration of different forest types in the Ituri region
in the early 1980s. Following completion of her dissertation, she returned
to the Ituri Forest with the Wildlife Conservation Society to carry out
research and promote the conservation of the Okapi and its habitat. With
a permanent base in the Congo, she and her husband, John, have documented
long-term botanical and zoological change within this remote site.
2003, David Quammen "Once There Were Lions"
David Quammen, author of The song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in
an Age of Extinctions (which won the 1997 New York Public Library Helen
Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism) was educated at Yale
and Oxford Universities. He is a two-time National Magazine Award winner
for his science essays and other work in Outside magazine and has received
an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters and the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. He has recently
published Monster of God (September 2003) and his other books include:
The Flight of the Iguana, Natural Acts and Wild Thoughts from Wild Places.
2002, Dr. Martha L. Crump
"In Search of the Golden Frog: A Tropical Saga"Dr. Martha L. Crump, adjunct professor of biology at Northern Arizona University and conservation fellow of the Wildlife Conservation Society, has studied harlequin frogs, golden toads and predaceous tadpoles in the rain forests and wetlands of Ecuador, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Brazil for over 30 years. She studied for her BA (1968), MA (1971) and Ph.D. (1974) at the University of Kansas, Lawrence and has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. She is currently a Board Member of Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force (DAPTF) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the Species Survival Commission. She has published numerous papers and books including: In Search of the Golden Frog (University of Chicago Press) and in 1996 was honored with the Distinguished Herpetologist Award. Dr. Crump is married with two children.
2001, Dr. Deborah Clark "How do tropical forests work? How do they affect world climate?" Deborah Clark has been carrying out field work in the tropics over the last 30 years, first in the Galapagos Islands for her doctoral studies, and for the last two decades as a full-time researcher at the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. She studies the ecology of tropical trees, long-term processes affecting tree growth and survival in lowland forests, effects of climate change on forest productivity, and implications of this for global climate and the atmosphere. For fourteen years she was co-director of the La Selva Biological Station, and she currently chairs the Graduate Education Review Committee for the Organization of Tropical Studies. She is a past President of the Association for Tropical Biology and regularly participates in international scientific programs. She is currently a Research Professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis but based full-time at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica.
2000, Dr. Christine Padoch "People, Forests, Conservation and Development: Small Landholder Timber Management in Amazonia" Dr. Christine Padoch is an ecological anthropologist who has worked in the forests and villages of Borneo and Amazonia. Her research has focused on how people farm and manage natural products in tropical rain forests and along the floodplains of tropical rivers. Dr. Padoch is Curator in the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden.
1999, Dr. Ariel Lugo "Active Management and the Conservation of Tropical Forests"
1998, Dr. Harry W. Greene Dr. Greene is an herpetologist and evolutionary biologist with the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. This event is co-sponsored by the International Center for Tropical Ecology and the St. Louis Zoo.
1997, Dr. G. David Tilman Dr. Tilman is known for his landmark studies of the relationship between plant productivity and diversity. This event was co-sponsored by the Center for Plant Conservation at the Missouri Botanical Garden, the St. Louis Zoo, and the International Center for Tropical Ecology.
1996, Dr. Paul Alan Cox "The Samoan Triangle: Rainforests, Flying Foxes and Indigenous Peoples"
1995, Dr. Lincoln P. Brower "The Grand Saga of the Monarch Butterfly"
1994, Dr. Nalini Nadkarni "Life in the Forest Canopy: Exploration of 'The Last Frontier'"
1993, Dr. George Schaller "Giant Pandas, Wild Yaks and Tibetan Antelopes: Can they be saved?" 1
992, Dr. Mark J. Plotkin "Rainforest Conservation and the Search for New Jungle Medicines"
1991, Dr. Amy Vedder "Mountain Gorillas: Cornerstone of Conservation"