The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Insight Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Cristin Samper, Ph.D., president and CEO, Wildlife Conservation Society

Speaker bio(s)

On September 1, 1914, the last passenger pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha. She was the last of what may have been the most abundant bird species in the world. At the same time, another species was brought back from the brink of extinction: the American bison. These two contrasting outcomes are the result of the interplay between natural history, science and our conservation actions. More than 60,000 species around the world face the threat of extinction, and the Wildlife Conservation Society works to save wildlife and wild places from the same fate as Martha’s.

Cristián Samper, a tropical biologist and an international authority on conservation biology and environmental policy, became president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York in August 2012. Dr. Samper leads the preeminent conservation organization with field programs in 65 nations and in all the world’s oceans and oversees the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo, which welcome more than 4 million visitors annually. Dr. Samper was previously the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, the world’s largest natural history collection with more than 126 million specimens and artifacts.

Prior to joining the Smithsonian he was the founder and first director of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute, the national biodiversity research institute in Colombia. He was awarded the National Medal of the Environment by the president of Colombia in 2001. He also served as chairman of the scientific advisory body of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Colombia and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. Dr. Samper is currently a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. Born in Costa Rica and raised in Colombia, Dr. Samper studied biology at the University of the Andes in Bogotá and earned his master's and doctorate degrees in biology from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Derek Bok prize for excellence in teaching.

Open to

Public

Contact

Gloria Phipps

Phone

(212) 327-8967

Sponsor

Gloria Phipps
(212) 327-8967
phippsg@rockefeller.edu