Dr. Marc Bekoff

Marc Bekoff is Professor of Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and a former Guggenheim Fellow. In 2000 he was awarded the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society for major long-term contributions to the field of animal behavior. Marc is also regional coordinator for Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots program, in which he works with students of all ages, senior citizens and prisoners, and also is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Jane Goodall Institute. He and Jane co-founded the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Citizens for Responsible Animal Behavior Studies in 2000. Marc is on the Board of Directors of The Fauna Sanctuary, The Cougar Fund, the Skyline Sanctuary and Education Center, and the Prairie Preservation Alliance and on the advisory board for Animal Defenders and for the Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group and the conservation organization SINAPU. He has been part of the international program, Science and the Spiritual Quest II and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) program on Science, Ethics, and Religion. Marc is also an honorary member of Animalisti Italiani and Fundacion Altarriba, and on the Scientific Review Board of the Great Ape Trust. In 2006 he was named a Fellow of the Dancing Star Foundation and an honorary board member of Rational Animal. In 2005 Marc was presented with The Bank One Faculty Community Service Award for the work he has done with children, senior citizens, and prisoners.  Marc's main areas of research include animal behavior, cognitive ethology (the study of animal minds), and behavioral ecology, and he has also published extensively on animal issues. He has published more than 200 papers and 18 books, including Species of mind: The philosophy and biology of cognitive ethology (with Colin Allen, MIT Press, 1997); Nature's purposes: Analyses of function and design in biology (edited with Colin Allen and George Lauder, MIT Press, 1998), Animal play: Evolutionary, comparative, and ecological perspectives (edited with John Byers, Cambridge University Press, 1998), Encyclopedia of animal rights and animal welfare (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998), and a book on the lighter side, Nature's life lessons: Everyday truths from nature (with Jim Carrier, Fulcrum, 1996). His children's book, Strolling with our kin was published in Fall 2000 (AAVS/Lantern Books) as was The smile of a dolphin: Remarkable accounts of animal emotions (Random House/Discovery Books). The cognitive animal: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on animal cognition (edited by Marc, Colin Allen, and Gordon Burghardt) appeared in 2002 (MIT Press), as did Minding animals: Awareness, emotions, and heart (Oxford University Press) and Jane Goodall and Marc's The Ten Trusts: What we must do to care for the animals we love (HarperCollins). Marc has edited a three volume Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), and a collection of his essays titled Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Reflections on Redecorating Nature was published by Temple University Press (2006). The Emotional Lives of Animals:A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy and Why They Matter will be published in March 2007 by New World Library and Marc is currently writing a book on the evolution of cooperation and morality in animals titled Wild Justice and Fair Play: Cooperation, Forgiveness, and Morality in Animals for the University of Chicago Press. Marc is also editing a four-volume Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships:A Global Exploration of our Connections with Animals for Greenwood Publishing Group that will be published in June 2007, and Marc and Cara Blessley Lowe are editing a book of readings on cougars titled Listening to Cougar. 

In late 2007 Shambhala Publications will be issuing a revised and updated edition of Marc's Strolling With Our Kin, titled Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect and Temple University Press will publish Marc's children's book on fair play in animals.

Marc's work has been featured on 48 Hours, in Time Magazine, Life Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times, New Scientist, BBC Wildlife, Orion, Scientific American, Ranger Rick, National Geographic Kids, on NPR, BBC, Fox, Natur GEO, in a National Geographic Society television special ("Play: The Nature of the Game"), in Discovery TV's "Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry," and in Animal Planet's "The Power of Play" and National Geographic Society's "Hunting in America". Marc has also appeared on CNN and Good Morning America.

In 1986 Marc became the first American to win his age-class at the Tour du Var bicycle race (also called the Master's/age-graded Tour de France). Among Marc's hobbies are cycling, skiing, hiking, and reading spy novels.

David Foreman

Dave Foreman has worked as a wilderness conservationist since 1971.  From 1973 to 1980, he worked for The Wilderness Society as Southwest Regional Representative in New Mexico and as Director of Wilderness Affairs in Washington, DC.  He was a member of the board of trustees for the New Mexico Chapter of The Nature Conservancy from 1976 to 1980.  From 1982 to 1988, he was editor of the Earth First! Journal.  Foreman is a founder of The Wildlands Project and was its Chairman from 1991-2003 and executive editor or publisher of Wild Earth from 1991-2003.  He is now the Executive Director and Senior Fellow of The Rewilding Institute, a conservation “think tank” advancing ideas of continental conservation.  He was a member of the national Board of Directors of the Sierra Club from 1995 to 1997 and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.  He speaks widely on conservation issues and is author of The Lobo Outback Funeral Home (a novel), Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, and The Big Outside (with Howie Wolke).  His new book, Rewilding North America, was published in 2004.  Foreman is the lead author and network designer of the Sky Islands Wildlands Network Conservation Plan and the New Mexico Highlands Wildlands Network Vision from The Wildlands Project.  He received the 1996 Paul Petzoldt Award for Excellence in Wilderness Education and was named by Audubon Magazine in 1998 as one of the 100 Champions of Conservation of the 20th Century.  He is considered one of the most effective and inspirational public speakers in the conservation movement.  Foreman is a backpacker, river runner, canoeist, fly-fisher, hunter, wilderness and wildlife photographer, and bird-watcher.  He lives in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.  For more information see www.rewilding.org

Dr. Charles Kennel

Charles F. Kennel is the ninth director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Kennel also serves as UCSD vice chancellor of marine sciences, dean of the Graduate School of Marine Sciences, and a professor of physics at Scripps.

Kennel’s primary area of research is fundamental plasma physics combined with space and astrophysics. His work has centered on basic plasma turbulence theory and collisionless shocks, the physics of solar wind and planetary magnetospheres, and the physics of pulsar magnetospheres and active galactic nuclei. He is author or coauthor of more than 250 experimental and theoretical publications.

From 1994-1996, Kennel served as associate administrator for NASA, directing Mission to Planet Earth, the world’s largest earth science program. He chaired the National Academy of Science/National Research Council Committee on Global Change Research from 1998 to 2001. He is currently serving his second term as chair of the NASA Advisory Council and recently served on the Pew Oceans Commission.

In 2003 Kennel was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2002, he was appointed by California Governor Gray Davis to the California Climate Action Registry Board of Directors. In 1999 Kennel was elected a fellow of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991. He also is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Physical Society.

He received the first Hannes Alfven Medal of the European Geophysical Society in 1998 and in 1997 received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize from the American Physical Society. He won the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Aurelio Peccei Prize from the Italian Academy of Sciences in 1996.

Kennel has been a Harvard National Scholar, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Brazil, a Fairchild Professor at the California Institute of Technology, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow.

Dr. Thomas Lovejoy

Thomas E. Lovejoy has been president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment since May 2002.  Before coming to the Heinz Center, he was the World Bank’s Chief of Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean and Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation.  Dr. Lovejoy has been Assistant Secretary and Counselor to the Secretary at the Smithsonian Institution, Science Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior, and Executive Vice President of the World Wildlife Fund-U.S.  He conceived the idea for the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project (a joint project between the Smithsonian and Brazil’s INPA), originated the concept of debt-for-nature swaps, and is the founder of the public television series Nature.  In 2001 he was awarded the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.  Dr. Lovejoy served on the science and environmental councils or committees under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations.  He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biology from Yale University.

Dr. Robin Moore

Dr. Robin Moore is Amphibian Conservation Officer for Conservation International and the Amphibian Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union. He is working to implement an ambitious global Amphibian Conservation Action Plan through strengthening the global network of amphibian experts and increasing collaboration among stakeholder to build capacity for amphibian conservation worldwide.

Robin’s first foray into herpetological research was a two-month expedition to the rainforests of Cameroon when he was just 20 years old; since then he has worked on a broad range of conservation and research projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. He received his PhD from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology in the UK ; his research focused on the impact of an introduced snake on the endemic midwife toad of Mallorca , Spain . In a rare conservation success story, the toad was recently downlisted from Critically Endangered to Vulnerable as a result of a recovery program combining captive breeding and reintroduction with targeted research. In light of the current amphibian crisis, Robin is now focusing his efforts on stemming global declines of amphibians.

Carl Pope

Carl Pope was appointed Executive Director of the Sierra Club, America's oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization, in 1992. A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Mr. Pope has been with the Sierra Club for the past 20 years. In that time, he served as Associate Conservation Director, Political Director and Conservation Director. 

In addition to his work with the Sierra Club, Mr. Pope has had a very distinguished record of environmental activism and leadership. He has served on the Boards of the California League of Conservation Voters, Public Voice, National Clean Air Coalition, California Common Cause, Public Interest Economics, Inc., and Zero Population Growth. Mr. Pope was also Executive Director of the California League of Conservation Voters and the Political Director of Zero Population Growth.

Among his major accomplishments, Mr. Pope coauthored California Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic initiative of 1986. He has written widely for magazines in the environmental field and is the author of Sahib, An American Misadventure in India, and the coauthor of Hazardous Waste in America.

Mr. Pope graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1967. He then spent two years as a volunteer with the Peace Corps in Barhi Barhi, India. He now lives with his family in Berkeley, California.

Dr. Matthew Sleeth

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Ben Lowe

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Wheaton Environmental Studies majors Ben Lowe was among thirty student leaders from Christian colleges across America who met in Washington D.C. in November 2006 to challenge America’s elected and faith leaders to take stronger action on global climate change. The students, including Ben and Jennifer, explained the Evangelical Youth Climate Initiative (EYCI), a document signed by over 1,500 young Christians concerned about climate change, at a press conference before heading to Capitol Hill to present the Initiative to their Senators.

In February 2006, over 80 evangelical leaders, including Rick Warren, Brian McLaren, and Wheaton College President Dr. Duane Litfin presented the Evangelical Climate Initiative (http://www.christiansandclimate.org)  to the public. Complementing the concerns of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, The EYCI (http://www.restoringeden.org/resources/EYCI/download)underscores the growth of Christian concern about environmental stewardship among student leadership on Christian college campuses by showing that such leaders consider such stewardship to warrant moral response, biblical understanding, and action-oriented concern. Ben and Jennifer, with other student leaders, also helped draft a letter (http://www.restoringeden.org/campaigns/GlobalWarming/EYCILetter/view) which was sent to President Bush, Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Reid asking them to work together to enact legislation to combat climate change. On their home campus at Wheaton College, Ben and Jennifer are working with other Wheaton students in preparing events associated with the upcoming visit of Sir John Houghton, the world's leading scientific authority on climate change and a leader in the Christian community on environmental stewardship, to Wheaton from January 22-24, 2007 (see related article on the visit, "Sir John Houghton to Speak at Wheaton College Chapel").

 Ben spent the summer of 2006 working in Tanzania as part of an international research team studying Africa’s second largest lake, Lake Tanganyika. Ben was chosen by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to participate as an undergraduate researcher as part of the NSF’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program in the Nyanza Project, an interdisciplinary study of the effects of climate change on the biology and limnology of Lake Tanganyika, supervised by Dr. Catherine O’Reilly of Vassar College and Dr. Andrew Cohen of the University of Arizona. Ben’s studies concentrated on the ecologic and economic effects of the local demersal (bottom-dwelling) fishery, especially the effect of local fishing on two species of cichlids, Benthochromis tricoti and Linnotilapia dardennei. With his colleagues and supervising scientists, Ben presented the results of his study to the Tansanizan Fisheries Research Institute.

Emma Sleeth

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