Biodiversity Days are focused on cultivating awareness and promoting understanding as a key foundation for engagement, action and inspired care of our planet. This year, on April 24th and 25th, Edward O. Wilson and other notable scientists and conservationists convened at Duke University for two full days of public lectures and panel discussions addressing the most important conservation issues and restoration efforts of our time. Videos of their lectures and panel discussions are archived below.
The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation is dedicated to expanding knowledge and understanding of biodiversity in all its detail and complexity in order to best care for the living world. We work to promote the protection of biodiversity as a moral imperative and advocate that universal conservation should be one of humanity’s transcendent goals. Our research and education initiatives, including Biodiversity Days, are focused on cultivating awareness and promoting understanding as a key foundation for citizen engagement and inspired care of our planet. For more information about the Foundation, and to donate, please visit www.eowilsonfoundation.org.
See photographs from Biodiversity Days
Day 1: Biodiversity Days Lecture Series
• Peter White, Professor of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“The Signature of Time and Place: Celebrating the Southeast’s Remarkable Biodiversity Pattern.”
• Gary Machlis, Science Advisor to the Director, National Park Service, and Professor of Environmental Sustainability, Clemson University
“Revisiting Leopold: Resource Stewardship in the National Parks”
• Todd Witcher, Executive Director, Discover Life in America
“The Smokies ATBI: A Model for Global Biodiversity Census.”
• Greg Carr, President, Gorongosa Restoration Project
“A Twenty-Year Project to Restore Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique”
Day 1: Biodiversity Days Half Earth Lecture and Panel Discussion
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qYrXAk_tggw%3Fenablejsapi%3D1%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Feowilsonfoundation.org
• E.O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
“Setting Aside Half the World for the Rest of Life”
and “Global Conservation” panel discussion with Edward O. Wilson, Jim McClintock, and Greg Carr. Moderated by Stuart Pimm.
Day 2: Biodiversity Days Films and Lecture Series
• Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University
“Practical Solutions for Preventing Extinction”
• Bill Finch, Senior Fellow, Gulf of Mexico, Ocean Foundation
“The Long View of Longleaf Pine Restoration: Making the Connections That Restore Contiguity and Continuity to Rivers, Wetlands and the Longleaf Pine Ecosystem on the Northern Gulf Coast”
• Jim McClintock, Endowed University Professor of Polar and Marine Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
“From Penguins to Plankton: the Impacts of Climate Change on the Marine Ecology of the Antarctic Peninsula”
• The films The Naturalist and The Guide were also screened during this block.
Day 2: James and Cathleen Stone Distinguished Lectureship in Biodiversity
• Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation, University of York
“What Will It Take to Avert an Extinction Wave in the Oceans?”
Introductory comments by E.O. Wilson
