The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

April 9 - Dr. Karen Strier

Vilas Professor & Irven DeVore Professor of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Primate Conservation in the 21st Century: Insights from the Muriqui Monkeys of Brazil"

I will trace the behavioral, ecological, and demographic changes over my 30-year study of a growing population of one of the world’s most critically endangered primates, the northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus) of Brazil.  The northern muriqui has captured international attention for its exceptionally peaceful behavior and egalitarian society.  Yet today, fewer than 1,000 individuals remain in only about a dozen isolated forest fragments in southeastern Brazil. The population in one of these fragments, located in Caratinga, Minas Gerais, has grown from about 60 to some 335 individuals in just three decades, representing one-third of the entire species.  Changes in the muriquis’ behavior appear to have buffered them from fluctuating ecological and demographic conditions, and provide clues into what we can do to insure their survival. These findings have implications for understanding the adaptive potentials of other primates and their chances for survival in our rapidly changing world.

April 23 - William (Bill) Konstant

The World's Rarest Rhinos.

May 14 - Dr. M. Sanjayan

Saving Earth in the Age of Man: In a world of 7 billion people what is our relationship with wild nature. Can wild nature & wildlife still exist in a human dominated planet?

Dr. M. Sanjayan is a leading global conservation scientist, writer and an Emmy-nominated news contributor focused on the role of conservation in improving human well-being, wildlife and the environment.  He is the Executive Vice President and senior scientist at Conservation International.

Sanjayan is currently filming his new TV series, Earth – A New Wild, produced by National Geographic Television in association with the Academy Award-winning Passion Pictures. It will air on PBS in 2015. He is also the science correspondent for Years of Living Dangerously, ten-episode Showtime docu-series event airing April 2014 on climate change.    In January 2014, he returned as a featured contributor to the BBC World News series The Power of Nature.

He holds a masters from University of Oregon and a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His scientific work has been published in journals including Science, Nature and Conservation Biology. Raised in Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone, Sanjayan’s unique background and expertise have also attracted mainstream media coverage in Vanity Fair, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure,Afar, Outside and The New York Times.  He frequently contributes to CBS News’ science and environment coverage and has  hosted documentaries for BBC and Discovery.

May 28 - Dr. Terese Hart

The Challenges of protecting wildlife in the Congo.

Terese is the Director of a Lukuru Foundation project that is working to create a new national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.   In 2007 the TL2 project¹ started an inventory of all the large mammals in an unexplored area of Congo’s central forest.  They found not only many of Congo’s large endemics:  bonobo, okapi and congo peacock but also a new species of monkey, lesula, never previously described; Cercopithecus lomamiensis is most closely related to the owl faced monkey.  Working closely with local people and regional administrations they have now delimited an area of 9000 km² to become national park.  Already it is protected as two provincial parks.   The process to arrive at this point has been critical to winning the support of surrounding villages and to galvanizing action against rebels who continue to rely on Congo’s main wilderness areas as retreats and for profit.

Terese and her husband, John, started to work for the conservation of DRCongo’s animals in the 1980s.    Their work has concentrated on okapi, duikers (rain forest antelope), and bonobo in particular, but their inventory techniques include all large mammals and they also have initiated major botanical projects to develop a more in depth understanding of the forest habitat and its variability.

The challenges to conservation work in DR Congo vary from learning to work not only in tropical wilderness with no infrastructure, but in an entire country where infrastructure in general has been swallowed up by forest and garden since the colonial period.  Pockets of violence and rebellion are scattered throughout the forest, an area that is more than half of Africa’s entire equatorial forest.  But, probably the most interesting challenge is working with the wide diversity of Congolese for whom the forest has a special importance as home, livelihood and identity.

¹  name derived from the names of principal river basins, Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba, where they work.

September 3 - John Ruthven

"Martha" The Last Passenger Pigeon.

John Ruthven, naturalist, author, lecturer, and internationally acknowledged master of wildlife art is often called the "20th Century Audubon."  In 2004 he received America’s highest award in his field, the National Medal of Arts, from President George W. Bush.

In 1974, John spearheaded the effort to save the last of the Cincinnati Zoo’s 19^th Century bird pagoda’s – the one where “Martha,” the last of the passenger pigeons, had once lived.  Through his leadership, and the sale of prints of his painting of “Martha,” the Zoo’s Passenger Pigeon Memorial was created.

Today, John has taken it a giant step forward, with his painting, “Martha – The Last Passenger Pigeon.”  The original will hang at the Cincinnati Zoo, but the painting is available for all to see in its bigger-than-life format in a 7 story mural on Vine Street in downtown Cincinnati.

John Ruthven is the recipient of the 2014 Cincinnati Zoo Wildlife Conservation Award.