Pleistocene Rewilding: Lions in a Den of Daniels?
Harry Greene
- Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University
Almost ten years ago a group of us published papers in Nature and American Naturalist that proposed partially restoring the lost North American Pleistocene megafauna with conspecifics or closely related proxies for tortoises, cheetah, elephants, and other species. In this seminar I will summarize our initiative and the subsequent response from conservation biologists and the public, with emphasis on implications for conserving biodiversity on a rapidly changing Earth.
Harry Greene was professor and curator in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, for two decades before moving to Cornell in 1999 where he is professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and curator of herpetology. Harry is president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and California Academy of Sciences. Harry’s honors include Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Cornell’s top teaching award: a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellowship, and the Edward O. Wilson Naturalist Award. In 2014, Business Insider named him one of Cornell’s “Top Ten Professors”. His Snakes:The Evolution of Mystery in Nature, won a PEN Literary Award, garnered a two-page spread in Time magazine, and made the New York Times’ annual list of 100 Most Notable Books.
Photo courtesy of Cynthia Prado.
Reception 4:30 p.m.
Talk 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.