The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement is the premier award for environmental science, environmental health and energy conferring great benefit upon mankind.

This morning sees the following announcement from Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement website.

“Two conservationists whose careers have centered on understanding ecosystem functions as the essential foundation for ecosystem restoration will share the 2010 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

The award, consisting of a $200,000 cash prize and gold medals, will go to Dr. Laurie Marker, the co-founder and executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, and Professor Stuart Pimm, the Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.”

The Pimm Group is absolutely delighted at the news of this well-deserved award and we offer Dr. Pimm our hearty congratulations.

Related links

• Nicholas School of the Environment press release
• News announcement on the Intersection

By 2100, climate change could cause up to 30 percent of land-bird species to go extinct worldwide. In Costa Rica, toucans normally confined to lower elevations are colonizing mountain forests, where they compete with resident species for food and nesting holes, and prey on the eggs and nestlings of other bird species. (Credit: iStockphoto/Steffen Foerster)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) — Where do you go when you’ve reached the top of a mountain and you can’t go back down?

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CRYING FOR A BETTER DEAL: A good relocation package for forest dwellers to save the tigers from the man-animal conflicts. BANGALORE: The relocation of forest dwellers from tiger reserves is increasingly being considered the best option for conservation of the big cat. Most of the 28 tiger reserves in the country are under ecological stress because of man-animal conflict.

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Stuart L. Pimm
2007 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement

Duke University professor Stuart Pimm became a conservation biologist watching species become extinct in Hawaii in the 1970s. That experience led to his commitment to study the scientific issues behind the global loss of biological diversity. Pimm has written over 200 scientific papers and four books, including The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities, and his global assessment of biodiversity’s future: The World According to Pimm.

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But what should we do to tackle the problem? One strategy, first proposed by Professor Norman Myers of Oxford University is to focus conservation efforts on ‘biodiversity hotspots’. These are special places where there are very high concentrations of threatened ‘endemic’ species – that is, species that are found nowhere else. A recent assessment has identified 34 such hotspots, covering just 2.3% of the Earth’s land surface, yet harbouring between 40 and 50% of the planet’s estimated 10 million species.

The hotspots idea has certainly caught the public’s attention and has attracted a great deal of funding. So far at least $900 million has been raised to support hotspot conservation and there are many successful hotspot conservation projects running around the world. But some conservation biologists worry that hotspots are the wrong priority for conservation. They question whether the strategy is cost effective and wonder if the goal to save the maximum number of species is the right one.

Some have suggested that a focus on conserving ‘protected areas’ is like putting money into intensive care beds as opposed to vaccination – it’s a distraction from the real issue which is the need to change people’s attitudes by integrating conservation into our everyday lives. To debate the arguments for and against focussing conservation efforts on biodiversity hotspots, Sue is joined by Stuart Pimm, Professor of Conservation Biology at Duke University in the USA, who has his own hotspot conservation charity – savingspecies.org; and also by Professor Georgina Mace, Director of the Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College, who worked on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

The Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary is located in India’s Western Ghats mountain range. The sanctuary contains some of India’s most celebrated and endangered wildlife, including the Bengal Tiger and Asian Elephant. Other mammals include the Guar, Sambar, Slender Loris, Chital, and Leopard. The sanctuary is also rich in bird species (nearly 300 have been recorded) and butterflies. As well, the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary is one of twenty-seven reserves that are apart of Project Tiger: a program to save’s India’s last tigers and their habitats.

Read more here.