AAA Awards Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin the Anthropology in Media Award
The Anthropology in Media Award (AIME) was established in 1987 to recognize the successful communication of anthropology to the general public through the media. Since 2009 Dr. Lumpkin and a team of volunteers have managed the participatory conservation e-zine, Voices for Biodiversity, which shares the stories of people from around the globe. Dr. Lumpkin has spearheaded a movement, and taken full advantage of a wide spectrum of media to bridge across geographical areas and to overcome access limitations in order to reach as wide a global audience as possible in her effort to bring home the significance, implications and ramifications of biodiversity and the critical pressures exerted on it by the human species.
We're facing what may possibly be the greatest extinction of species since the birth of our planet, and human beings are the dominant force behind this sixth extinction. How can we change our human perceptions and, thus, alter our negative impact on biodiversity? Are we evolutionarily hard-wired to destroy other species? Or can we become more aware of our own "animal nature" and consciously and deliberately change our behaviors? Clearly, there is an urgent need for these questions to be widely asked—and answered. Dr. Lumpkin and her team are striving to create a group of individuals doing precisely that by using the shared medium of storytelling, an ancient human form of communication, to speak out for those species who have no voice of their own. Voices for Biodiversity’s goal is to help all species, including the human species, survive and thrive together.
Thom van Dooren Commends Voices for Biodiversity
As Senior Lecturer in Environmental Humanities at the University of New South Wales, Australia, I believe that Voices for Biodiversity achieves precisely what it sets out to: it broadens and enhances the public dialogue on issues of vital importance for our changing world. Through its diverse multimedia and written formats, its wide range of contributors, its multilingual approach, and many other great innovations, Voices for Biodiversity is helping to inform and stimulate wide debate, while also providing a voice for knowledgeable people, many of them on the front lines of these issues. One of the particular strengths of Voices for Biodiversity is its focus on human interactions with biodiversity: the many ways in which the lives and livelihoods of peoples around the world are at present being remade through diverse processes of loss and change. We need more of precisely these kinds of stories and I applaud Voices for Biodiversity for the role they are playing in collecting and sharing these stories with the world.
Mongabay Publishes Article About Voices for Biodiversity
Mongabay's interview with Dr. Lumpkin states: "In a world where extinctions are almost common place and global warming barely raises an eyebrow, very few of us can return to find the places we grew up in unsullied by development. Sometimes, all that is left of a favorite grove of trees or strip of forest are memories. Through Voices for Biodiversity Project, an online magazine for storytellers, Tara Waters Lumpkin has succeeded in bringing together more than one hundred 'eco-reporters' who have shared their memories, highlighted environmental crises in their localities and raised their voices against habitat destruction."
Voices for Biodiversity Writer Alfred Mepukori Wins First Place
Alfred Mepukori, who wrote a two-part story about growing up in the Naimina Enkiyio Forest near the renowned wildlife reserve of Maasai Mara in Kenya, reports that his two-part story won first place in a creative writing competition at the University of Narok. The competition had 70 entries.
Elephant Voices Applauds Alfred Mepukori
Elephant Voices 2013 end of the year newsletter, signed by Dr. Joyce Poole and Petter Granli, reads: “One of our many citizen scientists is a young Maasai student, Alfred Mepukori, who interned with us this summer as part of his diploma in tourism and wildlife management at Maasai Mara University. We encouraged him to write an article for Voices for Biodiversity about his experiences growing up by the Naimina Enkiyio Forest (literally, the Forest of the Lost Child) and his recent work monitoring elephants in the forest for our project. He wrote a beautiful piece that has just been published in two parts. If you enjoy reading about Maasai culture, you will love his story: part 1 and part 2.
Robert Hii of Palm Oil Consumer Action Praises Voices for Biodiversity
Robert Hii of Palm Oil Consumer Action praises Voices for Biodiversity: "If you have an important issue or cause that needs a wider audience, Voices for Biodiversity is a perfect vehicle for it. I've been able to reach new audiences about palm oil with a few posted articles here! Most Americans have never heard of palm oil or the catastrophic impact American products that contain palm oil are having on humans, animals, and the environment. Palm oil is used in hundreds of American products including food, soaps, and cosmetics. The cost on the environment and global climate is devastating. Thousands of square miles of tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia are being illegally burned, animals driven to the brink of extinction, and land stolen from people who have lived there for centuries."
The Taos News Interviews Voices for Biodiversity
Tara Waters Lumpkin, Executive Director, Kat Pardo, Managing Editor, and Robert Katz, Production Manager and Photo Editor, as well as the other tireless Voices for Biodiversity volunteers are dedicated to breaking readers out of the passivity that allows people to watch biodiversity loss take place while ignoring the consequences. This interview by Jim O'Donnell for The Taos News explains how Voices for Biodiversity's team sees sharing stories as being one solution to human disconnection from other species and the environment.
Tara Waters Lumpkin Writes for AAA Huffington Post
Pointing to Hillary Clinton's statement that wildlife trafficking is now a security issue, Dr. Lumpkin states her hope that Clinton's statement will be interpreted as a watershed moment pushing the public to realize that our human own well-being is closely related to the well-being of other species and the ecosystems upon which we all depend. Lumpkin also cites several articles written for the ezine Voices for Biodiversity in this article: Lessons From Wolves, The Disappearing Rainforests of Kagoro, and the photojournalism gallery On the Wild Plains by Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson.
Chris Palmer Appreciates Voices for Biodiversity’s Approach
Chris Palmer has more than twenty-five years' experience as an environmental and wildlife film producer and is the Distinguished Film Producer in Residence at American University, "What I like most about Voices for Biodiversity," he says, "is that the ezine addresses conservation issues by offering a multimedia experience accessible to anyone around the globe. V4B works with eco-reporters from around the world, who create content, and also receives views from over ninety-eight countries.
This online experience can truly benefit wildlife and biodiversity. The ezine offers opportunities for people to be skeptical, to ask questions, and to connect with other citizen eco-reporters elsewhere, building a network of people addressing biodiversity issues.
I hope that when people watch a film on environmental issues, especially wildlife issues, they take a moment to think and ask, "Is there a conservation message? Or am I simply being entertained?" And, I believe that, in creating a participatory ezine, Voices for Biodiversity is encouraging a similar dialogue about our human role in biodiversity loss. Its readers and contributors ask themselves, "How do my actions affect wildlife and biodiversity near me? What can I do to improve the world for other species?'"
Dr. Stuart Pimm Commends Voices for Biodiversity's Participatory Approach
Dr. Stuart Pimm commends Voices for Biodiversity, saying, “No need to introduce me to Voices for Biodiversity — I'm familiar with what you do and just love it!”
Dr. Pimm is Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University and is author of A Scientist Audits the Earth. He heads the Pimm Group, a website that his students and others have contributed to since 2003, including dozens of blog posts on topics related to biodiversity, conservation, ornithology, economics, GIS science, natural disaster impacts and much more. Dr. Pimm also chairs Saving Nature, a group that is working reciprocally with Voices for Biodiversity on social media, blogging, and other methods of outreach to spread the word about the current biodiversity crisis and what we can do to address it.
Remarkable Women of Taos Profiles Tara Lumpkin, Founder of Voices for Biodiversity
Taos.Org has commended Dr. Tara Waters Lumpkin's work as an anthropologist and conservationist. Profiled in the Outdoors section of the Taos.org website, which presents women in Taos who have been active in ways that help the community and larger world, Dr. Lumpkin, Founder and President of Voices for Biodiversity, is quoted as saying, "The best way I can think of to change the way people treat other species and nature is to change how they relate to the natural world and its inhabitants." The article continues: "Convinced that without other species and healthy ecosystems human beings themselves will not survive, she is seeking to do something about it."
Wallace J. Nichols Praises Voices for Biodiversity
Wallace J. Nichols writes of Voices for Biodiversity, "Over the years I've seen first-hand how personal experiences with animals have transformed people and deepened their connection to the natural world and each other. Voices for Biodiversity is also a multimedia platform conceived from an anthropologist's perspective that educates and raises awareness about biodiversity, the Sixth Extinction and human ecology. It's a wonderful resource for absolutely everyone. How we perceive ourselves is key to making the changes required to curtail the biodiversity crisis. Voices for Biodiversity is refreshing, fascinating and recognizes our natural affinities for diversity and nature.”
Nichols is a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences and founder/co-director of Ocean Revolution, an international network of young ocean advocates, and advocates for protection of the life within world’s oceans in collaboration with a number of different organizations. He earned his MEM in Environmental Policy and Economics from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and his Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from University of Arizona.
