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Kent Student Wins Top Conservation Award

October 18, 2004

The Swiss watchmaker Rolex has just announced that University of Kent PhD student Laury Cullen Jr has won a Rolex Award for Enterprise 2004.

Every two years, Rolex bestows ten outstanding individuals with a coveted award, one of the top honours in field conservation. As a winner for 2004, Laury Cullen Jr receives US$ 35,000 towards his research on the ecology and conservation of jaguars in his native Brazil, and a personally inscribed gold Rolex watch.

Cullen, a former winner of a Whitley Award for Conservation in 2002, is taking his PhD at the Durrell Institute of Conservation Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent, and was selected from among more than 1,700 applicants from 116 countries by a panel of eminent scientists and explorers. His recent award recognises his pioneering work on the ecology and conservation of jaguars, and the restoration of fragmented landscapes in Brazil's endangered Atlantic Forest.

Cullen realised that Atlantic Forest fragments needed protection to ensure that the agricultural practices of incoming settlers did not cause further biodiversity loss, and less habitat for jaguars. 'These isolated forest patches are now too small to maintain their ecological integrity without genetic exchange with other forest patches,' explains Cullen. Consequently, Cullen is linking the fragments into a wider biodiversity network. Between now and 2007, Cullen plans to join the remaining forest fragments in the Pontal do Paranapanema region of the State of Sao Paulo with new wildlife corridors. Cullen also plans to work in partnership with farmers to establish fenced buffer zones that provide biological stepping-stones for jaguars and other wildlife.

Laury Cullen Jr's success stems from his development of an environmental protection plan that combines forestry techniques, wildlife research and farmer participation, and is winning him high praise. Cullen is supervised at DICE by Dr Richard Bodmer, Reader in Conservation and Ecology. 'His project, combining agroforestry and wildlife habitat corridors, is at the cutting edge of conservation and will have lasting impact both for wildlife and for local people,' says Bodmer. 'This is exactly the type of project that is needed for successful conservation.' DICE Director, Professor Nigel Leader-Williams, notes with pleasure the increasing roll of honour that DICE research students are attracting so early in their research careers. 'Such awards can only help enhance DICE's international reputation in providing training in conservation to nationals from countries rich in biodiversity', says Leader-Williams.

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