(Photo above: Dr. Thomas Lovejoy | Courtesy of High Desert Museum)
Dr. Thomas Lovejoy to speak about climate change with focus on the High Desert. The High Desert Museum will wrap up this year’s Natural History Pub lecture series on June 8 with a presentation at the museum by Thomas E. Lovejoy, Ph.D., a biologist and conservationist generally credited with bringing the tropical forest problem to the fore as a public issue.
The focus of Dr. Lovejoy’s talk will be the urgent subject of climate change and how we can proactively manage for our children’s futures through ecosystem restoration. “It’s a privilege to bring Dr. Lovejoy to the museum and hear his perspective on the interplay of landscape ecology, changing environments and policy”, said High Desert Museum Executive Director Dana Whitelaw, Ph.D.”
Lovejoy is credited with coining the term “biological diversity” in 1980 and made the first projection of extinction rates in the Global 2000 Report to the president that same year. He serves as senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and is a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University. He has served as president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, World Bank’s chief biodiversity advisor and the executive vice president of the World Wildlife Fund. Spanning the political spectrum, Dr. Lovejoy has served on science and environmental councils under the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. He also founded the popular public television series Nature.
“As a global conservation leader, Dr. Lovejoy is awe-inspiring. He has an almost impossible combination of skills as a preeminent biological researcher, dynamic leader, visionary policy maker and gifted communicator,” said John Goodell, curator of natural history at the museum.
This Natural History Pub talk, titled A Wild Solution for Climate Change, will be held at the High Desert Museum on Monday, June 8. Guests are invited to arrive at 6pm to enjoy hors d’oeuvres and a no-host bar. The presentation will begin at 7:00pm. The event is free but RSVPs are strongly recommended. RSVP to www.highdesertmuseum.org/rsvp
The Natural History Pub series is hosted by the High Desert Museum in partnership with University of Oregon.
