Posted on January, 10 2011

“Many people have a very strong connection to specific mammals or birds or communities”, JC Riveros, WWF’s senior scientist for the Amazon. “My own career began with tracking parrots ante the other species as a landscape ecologist, using scientific tools to identify key areas for biodiversity conservation”.

Today, as director of WWF’s Living Amazon Initiative’s Science, Monitoring and Evaluation team, Riveros is more likely to assess geo-spatial data, or meet with an environmental minister, than to trek into the deep forests of the Amazon. “My job”, he says, “is to be a link between hard science and the real needs of people in their communities and in the field.”

In short, he takes discoveries from some of the most remote planes on the planet, and translates then for the government offices where major decisions are made.

Each year, he also takes a group of 14-20 young biologists and conservationists out for a full month to conduct experimental research and connect their observations to regional and global issues. As he points out, “knowing how the forest works, how natural cycles are being affected, helps you understand why large-scale work is so important.”

In his current work analyzing freshwater systems in the Amazon, he is creating a link between freshwater species like river dolphins, fish and frogs, and the ecosystems that provide reliable water sources for human needs. Already, Brazil’s National Water Authority and the Brazilian Development Bank have expressed interest in the links between healthy and watersheds, human health and economic growth.

“Life is resurgent. Nature has such strength.”

“This is the way we have to work”, Riveros says. “Helping governments and businesses make investments that can be beneficial for societies, species and the bottom line. We need to make a simpler”, he continues, “for communities to understand how the urgent problems they face –droughts, flooding, changing agricultural yields- are in fact related to habitat destruction and climate change”.