Candidate info
I often describe myself as a conservation biologist interested in influencing public policy, without being a politician. I work on understanding patterns in the spatial distribution of threatened species and ecosystems, as well as the underlying causes of these patterns, and the development of policy guidelines for biodiversity conservation. My professional career has always combined working with Provita (a Venezuelan NGO and IUCN member that I co-founded), being an ecology professor at IVIC, and actively engaging with IUCN. During my final year as an undergraduate student, I began working on the Red Book of Venezuelan Fauna (with Franklin Rojas-Suárez). A few years later, I was one of the promoters of the adaptation of red list categories and criteria to ecosystems, leading to the publication of the Red Book of Venezuelan Terrestrial Ecosystems, and the initiation of a process for establishment of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems at the global level. Through my work with national red lists of species, I was invited to join the National Red List Working Group of IUCN, then became Deputy Chair of SSC and in 2016 was elected Commission Chair. All my research (>200 publications) and students (2 postdocs, 13 graduate, 8 undergraduate) have focused on conservation themes, crossing disciplinary and institutional lines. I believe that the best biodiversity conservation policies are based on scientific evidence, and have devoted my professional life to achieving this goal.
Acceptance of NominationManifesto
