Since we lost Tom Lovejoy on Dec. 25, 2021, I discover myself thinking about him frequently and missing him very much.
Tom was WWF’s very first researcher. Hired in the 1970s by Russ Train, creator and chairman emeritus of WWF, he later on headed our international preservation program. I dealt with him and for him up until he moved to the Smithsonian Institution and we remained in routine touch afterwards as associates and good friends. And obviously, after leaving WWF, Tom offered ever so kindly of himself as a Board and National Council member.
Tom’s enthusiasm for science and for nature was contagious. He brought ratings to the research study website he produced outdoors Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon, a lot of them policymakers who left motivated by their forest experience and persuaded of the crucial significance of securing tropical biodiversity. He was a vigorous and appealing speaker and supporter for preservation prior to clinical, policy, and popular audiences. His reach was amazing, as was his effect.
It’s with that tradition in mind that I am happy to reveal that WWF is devoting the yearly science seminar to Tom. The seminar has its origins in discussions Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF, and I had in the months prior to he took control of about supporting science at WWF. We challenged the science group to create an effort and the Science for Nature program, with the seminar as its focal point, was the outcome. Tom, needless to state, was an active individual in and fan of that work. Given Tom’s amazing contributions to WWF and to nature preservation as an entire, I recommended to Carter that WWF plainly and durably commemorate the unique Tom Lovejoy by relabeling the seminar in his honor.
I hope you’ll all join me in going to the Thomas Lovejoy Science for Nature Symposium on Oct. 17, practically or face to face in Washington, D.C. Fittingly, the very first seminar bring his name will concentrate on the Amazon.
