Patrícia Medici: The coolest animal you know nothing about ... and how we can save it
แพทริเซีย มีดีซี (Patrícia Medici): สัตว์สุดเจ๋งที่คุณแทบไม่รู้จัก....และเราจะอนุรักษ์มันได้อย่างไร
Patrícia Medici leads the longest running conservation project to protect the threatened lowland tapir. Full bio
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on the face of the Earth.
in the animal kingdom.
the past 20 years of my life
of tapirs in Brazil,
I've been thinking really, really hard
about the real contributions I have made
of these animals I love so much.
and contributing to their conservation,
so many different conservation crises.
It's all over the news every day.
are being destroyed,
on the brink of extinction:
the tapir species I work with,
of South America.
in tropical forests such as the Amazon,
large patches of habitat
they need to reproduce and survive.
parts of their geographic distribution.
very, very unfortunate
for the habitats where they are found.
consists of fruit,
they swallow the seeds,
the habitat through their feces.
in shaping and maintaining
as gardeners of the forest.
would seriously affect
still very young, fresh out of college,
and conservation program.
zero information about tapirs,
so difficult to study.
very elusive animals,
very basic data about these animals.
that a conservationist does?
to support conservation action,
are very hard to study,
on indirect methods to study them.
around their necks
other conservationists around the world.
about how they use space,
how many people around the world
this is a tapir.
training, capacity building.
the conservationists of the future.
conservation battles,
and they need the passion to do that.
biomes in the world.
first arrived in Brazil,
in the eastern part of South America.
and the construction of cities,
of the Atlantic forest
isolated, disconnected populations.
that tapirs move through open areas
to patch of forest.
to identify the potential places
of wildlife corridors
could cross the landscape safely.
conservation efforts to the Pantanal
freshwater floodplain in the world,
for lowland tapirs in South America.
has been extremely refreshing
healthy tapir populations in the area,
we'll ever find,
we are using another technique:
with a movement sensor
when they walk in front of it.
to gather precious information
and social organization
pieces of the puzzle
those conservation strategies.
we are expanding our work once again
in the central part of Brazil.
of economic development in my country,
and wildlife populations
by several different threats,
this new program in the Cerrado
along the highways
in the middle of sugarcane plantations
that they know how tapir meat tastes
made me realize --
two decades of hard work
we still have so much work to do
from disappearing.
to solve all these problems.
in the conservation world
than we are right now.
for tapirs in the Cerrado,
of putting reflective stickers
used on big trucks
help drivers see this shining thing
slow down a little bit.
reduce the amount of tapir roadkill.
the kind of stuff that needs to be done.
with all these questions
of supporters behind me,
I'm ever going to stop.
most probably for the rest of my life.
for Patrícia, my namesake,
and monitored in the Atlantic Forest
in the Pantanal.
a baby tapir we captured
also in the Pantanal.
that I've had the pleasure to meet
I will encounter in the future.
deserve to live in a world
and see and benefit from
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Patrícia Medici - Wildlife conservationistPatrícia Medici leads the longest running conservation project to protect the threatened lowland tapir.
Why you should listen
Patrícia Medici is a Brazilian conservation biologist whose main professional interests are tapir conservation, tropical forest conservation, metapopulation management, landscape ecology and community-based conservation.
For the past 20 years, Patrícia has been working for a Brazilian non-governmental organization called IPÊ, Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute for Ecological Research), of which she was one of the founding members together with Cláudio and Suzana Padua. Since 1996, Patrícia has coordinated the Lowland Tapir Conservation Initiative in Brazil. Since 2000, Patrícia has been the Chairperson of the IUCN/SSC Tapir Specialist Group (TSG), a network of over 120 tapir conservationists from 27 different countries worldwide.
Patrícia has a Bachelor’s Degree in Forestry Sciences from the São Paulo University (USP – Universidade de São Paulo), a Masters Degree in Wildlife Ecology, Conservation and Management from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Brazil, and a Ph.D. Degree in Biodiversity Management from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent, United Kingdom.
Patrícia has been honored with three very prestigious conservation awards: Harry Messel Conservation Leadership Award from the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2004, Golden Ark Award from the Golden Ark Foundation in the Netherlands in 2008, and Whitley Award from the Whitley Fund for Nature in the United Kingdom also in 2008. Patrícia received the 2011 Research Prize from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom.
Patrícia Medici | Speaker | TED.com