Convertendo os religiosos: leia, ria, chore ou xingue...

BioScience 59(6):463-464. 2009
doi: 10.1525/bio.2009.59.6.2

Converting the Religious: Putting Amphibian Conservation in Context

Douglas C. Woodhams

Douglas C. Woodhams (e-mail:dwoodhams@gmail.com;
http://savethefrogs.com/who_we_are/doug_woodhams.html) is a senior research associate in the Institute of Zoology at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

In August 2007, at a remote site In the Darien Province of Panama, I surveyed amphibians for immune defenses against Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the lethal chytrid fungus linked to many population extinctions throughout Central America. While lodging at a Catholic mission bordering our site, I met Padre Wally, an American expatriate and priest who has been working to bring education, clean water, and roads to the people of the region. To preserve the watershed, he maintains Parque Natural San Francisco, one of several large areas of rainforest. Ironically, the padre knew little about the park's biodiversity, but much about construction. Bulldozers and heavy equipment lay between our lodge and the park. Thus began an effort to put amphibian conservation in context, and to understand the role of a conservation biologist in communicating the value of biodiversity to nonscientists. In the face of urgent human need, can we motivate expensive conservation action with utilitarian scientific justifications?

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