Wildlife Trust :: WT Appoints Andrew Taber

Wildlife Trust Appoints Andrew Taber as
Executive Vice President for Programs

Wildlife Trust is pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew Taber as Executive Vice President for Programs. In his new role, Dr. Taber will be charged with advancing the work of the Wildlife Trust Alliance, a network of 12 science-based, international conservation organizations that have banded together to provide a framework for collaborative research, evaluation, accreditation, and policy analysis and recommendations. He also will coordinate WT's ongoing programs in Conservation Medicine, the New York Bioscape Initiative and the Edge of the Sea Aquatic conservation program.

In making the announcement, Dr. Mary C. Pearl, President of Wildlife Trust, says, "We are delighted to have Andrew join our team. He is truly an international individual with exceptional skills: he was born and raised in Asia, studied in the U.S. and England, and has spent more than 20 years conducting field work and conservation programs in Latin America."

She adds, "He has proven himself to be a professional of intellectual rigor, who can communicate effectively with scientific colleagues and policy makers. Additionally, Andrew is known for his careful mentoring of students, and his sensitive work with local communities, all skills and qualities we welcome at Wildlife Trust."

As the son of a US Foreign Service China specialist, Andrew Taber spent a childhood primarily in Asia and Europe, where he often camped and explored mountainous areas with his father, a committed walker and climber.

"From these early experiences," Taber explains, "I became fascinated with wildlife and wild country. At the same time, I developed a strong social conscience based on the poverty I saw as a child."

Those beginnings - extraordinary by any standard - became the touchstone for a life that continues to celebrate a love of wildlife and wild country. What's more, Taber has become a protector of wild places through his studies and his career.

For example, Taber's high school classes in ecology and environmental studies at Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, led to undergraduate studies in Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where his senior thesis documented a previously unknown migration route for Gray whales in Alaska.

Following graduation, he spent three years completing fieldwork in Alaska. Projects included Bowhead whale population monitoring with Inupiat Indians on the North Slope, and sea bird and sea mammal surveys along the Aleutian Island chain.

Taber left Alaska for Oxford University, UK, where he completed his doctorate in zoology under the tutelage of Professor David Macdonald.

"This study," says Taber, "took me to Argentina, where I undertook the first field study on the mara, or Patagonian cavy, for my dissertation. With this project, I began what was to become a twenty-five year focus on Latin America."

He adds, "In 1987, doctorate in hand, I moved to Paraguay to start the first intensive field study on the Chacoan peccary. This species, unknown to science until 1975, is today highly endangered. It inhabits the Gran Chaco, an arid and hot thorn forest region in South America's heartland. I developed the first action plans for its conservation, trained students and drew attention to the biodiversity and protection needs of the Chaco, an area that had been largely ignored by conservationists."

Dr. Pearl describes the rigorous process for selecting Taber for the newly created position: "Members of the Wildlife Trust Alliance expressed a desire at our last meeting to hire someone dedicated to advancing the Alliance - someone with skills in science, academic writing and fundraising, and someone keen to share experiences and make connections both within and beyond our network - so that we all may accomplish the highest quality and most effective wildlife conservation possible.

"Such a key person would also need important social skills: humility, a propensity to listen first and speak later, a sense of humor, and the energy and desire to wake up every day thinking of ways to foster growth of the institutions and members of the Wildlife Trust team."

Pearl adds, "To find such a person, we sent a job description far and wide, and a team of board and staff members, including Alonso Aguirre, Claudio Padua, Andrew Dobson, Allen Model, Carol Timmis, Steven Niemczyk, and Gary Tabor to assist with interviews.

"Our unanimous choice was Andrew. It is a pleasure to welcome Andrew, his wife Dolores, and his three daughters to the Wildlife Trust family."

About his appointment, Taber says, "I am extremely excited about this new position at Wildlife Trust. This is one of the most innovative and forward thinking of conservation organizations working internationally today bringing together its focus on protecting nature, safeguarding ecosystems and health. I also think its focus on empowering local conservation scientists and organizations through the Wildlife Trust Alliance is the surest path to engender enduring, effective change, worldwide. This is one of the most exciting moves of my professional career."

Most recently, Taber served as Director of Wildlife Conservation Society's Amazonian Conservation Network, where he worked to improve conservation practice through promoting the sharing of lessons learned, developing conservation tools, and promoting adaptive management in Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Dr. Andrew Taber preparing a list of local wildlife species with an elder of the Isoceño Indian tribe in the Bolivian Gran Chaco. Dr. Taber played an instrumental role in building an alliance between the Isoceño Indians and conservationists to create and manage one of the largest protected areas in the Western Hemisphere, the Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park and Integrated Management Area. Photograph by Luiz Claudio Marigo

Andrew Taber with a group of Isoceño Indian children, and a baby peccary, in Bolivia. The Isoceño Indians live in the scrub forest of the Gran Chaco, one of the largest remaining expanses of tropical dry forest in the World. Dr. Taber has worked almost two decades to conserve the wildlife of this vast region while strengthening the roles of local peoples in its management. Peccaries are ecologically critical for the functioning of Neotropical forest ecosystems. Dr. Taber undertook some of the first long term field studies on these species and has also fostered the research of many local scientists through the Pigs, Peccaries and Hippos Specialist Group of the IUCN. Photograph by Luiz Claudio Marigo.

Dr. Taber and a southern elephant seal on the Valdes Peninsula in Patagonia, Argentina. Here he lived for two years on a sheep ranch while undertaking his first field studies on the little known Patagonian cavy. Photograph by Eric Sanderson.

About the Wildlife Trust Alliance

The Wildlife Trust Alliance, a network of 12 science-based international conservation organizations (and individual members) was founded in 2004. The Alliance provides a global voice for local communities and conservation professionals worldwide through collaborative research, evaluation, accreditation, and policy analysis and recommendations.