CABS/University of Virginia PartnershipCABS has established collaborations with universities and academic institutions across the globe to strengthen its understanding of the threats to the world’s biodiversity. One of its newest and most promising partnerships is with on of the top US institutions, the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, VA.
The university’s partnership with CABS is part of an ongoing UVA initiative to raise its already outstanding profile in biological and environmental conservation science. This partnership is opportune as UVA has a long-standing investment in applied research in a number of biodiversity hotspots and high-biodiversity wilderness areas where CI works, including in Southern Africa and Brazil.
Conservation International and UVA formalized their increasing ties in 2004 at the launch of the book Hotspots: Revisited in Houston. The two organizations further cemented their partnership in February, 2005 when CABS and UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences agreed to collaborate in implementing the IUCN Global Mammal Assessment. UVA has already made a commitment of $1 million to this effort.
The fruits of the agreement are already evident. UVA and CABS jointly conducted several successful Global Mammal Assessment workshops in 2005, focusing on African primates and mammal assessments in Madagascar, Japan, Australasia, Brazil, and Southwest Asia. Major workshops are planned for the Andes, Mesoamerica, and Southeast Asia.
UVA has also hired three research assistants to support the project, and expects to hire several more in the coming months.
Collaborations between CABS and UVA have accelerated on a number of other fronts as well. UVA was a major institutional collaborator to Hotspots: Revisited, with John Lamoreux of the UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences serving as a co-editor of the book. In addition, four CABS staff - Tom Lacher, Thomas Brooks, Marc Steininger, and Simon Stuart - have been appointed as Visiting Scientist at the UVA Department of Environmental Sciences. Don Church, a Research Associate in the Department of Biology at UVA, also played an essential role in the development of amphibian conservation strategies building from the publication of the Global Amphibian Assessment.
In the longer term, both institutions are keen to extend this partnership to include education and capacity building measures in addition to research collaborations. CABS staff have already presented several seminars as guest lecturers at UVA. Possibilities for future collaboration include: CABS involvement in UVA graduate student committees; the establishment of a comprehensive internship program between UVA and CABS; collaborations on library and data resources; and the use of distance-learning techniques pioneered at UVA to build capacity for conservation science.
