Brazilian
conservation biologist Patrícia Medici first won a Whitley Award, the “Green
Oscars” for conservation science, in 2008; this year, she’s the recipient of
the top tier of the prize, the Whitley Gold Award.
She will
use the $75,000 prize to fund the new stage of her studies, in which she plans
for the first time to study the lowland tapir in the Amazon.
Medici
has already spent two decades studying the species, South America’s largest
land mammal, in the Atlantic Forest, the Pantanal wetlands, and the Cerrado
grassland.
She hopes
to use the next stage of the study, in the Amazon, to expand understanding of
the species by seeing how it reacts to deforestation driven by mining,
large-scale agriculture, and logging.
Social
and travel restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented
Brazilian conservationist Patrícia Medici from going to London last month to
receive one of the most prestigious awards in the world of conservation
science.
The
Whitley Gold Award — the top prize given
out every year by the Whitley Fund for Nature — is considered such a major
honor that it is known as the “Green Oscars” and is handed out by Princess Anne
of England, the fund’s patron. Medici, who received her first Whitley Award in
2008, was named the recipient this year for her work to conserved Brazil’s
threatened wildlife in general and the lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) in
particular. The awards ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society has now been
rescheduled to December, if things are normal by then.
Until
then, however, Medici says she hopes the health crisis doesn’t prevent her from
resuming her expeditions with the Lowland Tapir Conservation Initiative (Incab) in
the second half of 2020.
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