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British conservationist to present Hefner Lecture Oct. 22

10/14/2009

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David Macdonald

David Macdonald, founder and director of Oxford University’s WildCRU, the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, will present the 35th annual Hefner Lecture on “People and Nature: Conservation, Conflict, and Compromise” at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, in 102 Benton Hall.

WildCRU, founded in 1986, was the first university-based conservation research unit in Europe. It has now grown to be one of the largest and most productive conservation research institutes in the world. With more than 50 researchers and members drawn from more than 30 countries, WildCRU’s projects range from the Scottish Highlands to Mongolia, West Africa and the Galapagos Islands. Its mission is to achieve practical solutions to conservation problems through original scientific research.

Macdonald, Oxford University’s first professor of wildlife conservation, studies the behavioral ecology and conservation of wild mammals – in particular carnivores – ranging from meerkats in the Kalahari to capybaras in Venezuela to wood mice in the United Kingdom. He is author or co-author of many books written for the scientific audience and the general public, including the best-seller The Velvet Claw. He has twice won the BBC “Natural World” Natural History Author of the Year Award, for Running with the Fox and Mammals of Europe. He has also produced award-winning documentaries, including “Meerkats United” which won a Special Award from WildScreen. “The Night of the Fox” was a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) finalist for Best Documentary of the Year and made television history by being the first broadcast-quality infra-red video ever transmitted on television.
Committed to “translating evidence into policy” Macdonald also has a strong commitment to public service: He currently serves on the Board of Natural England; he is chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Darwin Initiative for the Conservation of Biodiversity; he is, or has been, vice president of the Wildlife Trusts, the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and he is a trustee of the World Wildlife Fund, Earthwatch and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.

His recent awards include the 2005 Dawkins Prize for Conservation and Animal Welfare, the 2006 American Society of Mammologist’s Merriam Prize for research in mammalogy and the British equivalent in 2007 and being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008.

The Hefner Lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will be held after the lecture in the Hefner Zoology Museum at 100 Upham Hall.  

Established in memory of Robert Hefner, former chair and professor of zoology and founder of the Hefner Museum, the lecture is sponsored by the Hefner Museum, Center for Environmental Education, Natural History and Conservation and the department of zoology. For more information, contact Donald Kaufman, director of the Hefner Museum, at 529-4617.