Interview: A Pioneering Biologist On the Keys to Forest Conservation

Over the course of decades of work in Central America, primarily in Costa Rica, the University of Pennsylvania’s Daniel Janzen has grown increasingly dismayed by the steady loss of the region’s forests. Now, Janzen is involved in a two-pronged effort to reverse that trend. The first initiative, which springs from his conviction that forests and biodiversity can only be preserved in large swaths, involves his commitment to raise a half-billion dollars to endow the entire Costa Rican park system in perpetuity. The second is the development of a “barcorder” device, a kind of taxonomic iPod designed to quickly identify the world’s organisms by their DNA, in conjunction with a vast database to deliver that information to users. Janzen is hopeful the barcorder will soon be widely available and will help dispel the public apathy that has led to so much forest destruction. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Janzen discusses the struggle to preserve Central and South American forests and the reasons why major conservation organizations have resisted some of the most promising forest preservation solutions.

Read the interview