Laurance: ATBC new president elect
January 07, 2005
William F. Laurance is the new president elect of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC)
STRI staff scientist William F. Laurance, a world authority in tropical conservation biology, is the new president elect of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), the world’s largest scientific organization dedicated to the study and conservation of tropical ecosystems. STRI’s S. Joseph Wright, moves to the position of past president, while STRI research associate Thomas E. Lovejoy is serving as current president. The ATBC has 1400 members from many countries around the world, and publishes the journal Biotropica. It also plays a major role in training young scientists and graduate students in the tropics, and organizes international conferences each year, often in the tropics. The 2005 ATBC Conference will be in Uberlandia, Brazil, and the 2006 Conference in Beijing, China. Laurance focuses on the ecological impacts of intensive land-uses such as habitat fragmentation, logging, and wildfires, and consequences of global atmospheric climatic changes on tropical communities.
He is also actively involved in conservation and development policy, especially in the Amazon and central Africa.
Laurance is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and was recently recognized as the most productive scientist in the 25-year history of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP), a longterm study of forest fragmentation in the central Amazon. In addition to serving as ATBC president, Laurance will continue to co-chair the ATBC Conservation Committe, which is playing an active role in identifying and bringing public and media attention to key tropical conservation issues.
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