Dr. Stephen Hubbell wins prestigious International Prize for Biology

CTFS-ForestGEO co-founder Stephen P. Hubbell will receive this year’s International Prize for Biology, awarded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The committee on the International Prize, chaired by Dr. Takashi Sugimura, announced its selection earlier last week for the specialized field of “Biology of Biodiversity”. The International Prize for Biology is one of the highest scientific honors given by Japan. The prize is granted to Dr. Hubbell for his exceptional contributions to biological and ecological research.

Dr. Hubbell’s long and remarkable career covers a wide-range of research topics including tropical plant ecology, resource competition, animal behavior, and theoretical ecology. He has authored four books and more than 220 scientific papers. He is perhaps most widely known for his unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography that offers a nontraditional explanation for the diversity and relative abundance of species in ecological communities. The theory has spawned a significant growth in research in theoretical ecology.

Currently Dr. Hubbell is a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Life Sciences Division at University of California, Los Angeles. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advance­ment of Science. He is also founding chairman of the National Council for Science and the Environment, an organization whose mission is to improve the scientific basis of environmental decision-making.

In 1980 Dr. Hubbell helped establish the Barro Colorado Island forest plot in Panama, the first of CTFS-ForestGEO’s sites.

Seacology Prize awarded to Filip Damen, CTFS partner in Papua New Guinea

As the new CTFS plot in Wanang, Papua New Guinea is being established, Filip Damen is being recognized for his heroic efforts to conserve the forest of his community, thereby making the plot and other ecological research in PNG possible.

On October 8th, Filip was awarded the Seacology Prize for 2009 for his remarkable courage in protecting his community’s ancestral lands from destructive logging, and helping develop educational and economic opportunities for the eleven clans that occupy Wanang area in Madang Province, PNG. Seacology awards its prestigious international prize annually to indigenous island leaders who endanger their lives to protect their island’s environment and culture.

Click here for a video clip of Filip’s acceptance speech and the full press release.

Recognizing the threat of logging to biodiversity and the Wanang way of life, Filip led a group of Wanang clans to sign a historic conservation deed in 2000. This agreement united the Wanang clans in their resolve to limit exploitation of the lowland rainforest of their region. Since then, Filip and his community have successfully resisted the relentless pressure from logging interests to sell their land for short-term profit.

Their unique conservation strategy has been to encourage and assist with biological research in their forests. Since 2002, Filip and villagers have been working with Drs. Vojtech Novotny and George Weiblen of the New Guinea Binatang Research Center to conduct ecological research in the Wanang Conservation Area. And just last year, Filip led his community to partner with CTFS to set up the first long-term, large-scale forest dynamics plot in Oceania. This is a great achievement for Filip, for the 50-ha plot in Wanang now gives New Guinea the capacity to monitor its forests and will enable researchers to assess the response of Pacific forests to global change and understand the ecological processes that sustain healthy forest ecosystems in the Pacific region. Funding for the project is provided by John Swire & Sons (PNG) Ltd. and Steamships Trading Co.