Dr. Lucia Liu Severinghaus, Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Biodiversity Research Center, recently received the Forest and Nature Conservation Award from the Council of Agriculture (COA), Executive Yuan, in recognition of her conservation efforts in Taiwan. She received the award at a ceremony in Taipei on March 12, 2010.

        Dr. Severinghaus is an ornithologist who specializes in avian ecology and behavior. Her studies of endangered birds have fostered greater understanding of Taiwan’s avian ecological system and public awareness of wildlife conservation. In 1998, she was named as one of the most influential people in Taiwan in the last four centuries by a prominent Taiwan magazine entitled CommonWealth.

Dr. Severinghaus received her Ph.D. in natural resources from Cornell University in 1983. She has received several academic honors, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Ornithologists' Union and Membership of the International Ornithological Committee.

Dr. Severinghaus led a team of scholars to produce The Avifauna of Taiwan, a three-volume tome to be published in March this year. They examined and evaluated all the publications and observation records concerning Taiwan’s birds in the last 60 years. Using modern classification, they compiled information on the morphology, systematics, ecology, behaviors, vocalization, as well as conservation needs of all the species that exist in Taiwan.

From 2009, under the sponsorship of the Taiwan Forestry Bureau, Dr. Severinghaus and members of the Raptor Research Group of Taiwan have been working to discover the migration route and breeding location of Butastur indicus, commonly known as the grey-faced buzzard. They found that the birds passing through Taiwan in large numbers each October breed in China and North Korea and in the Philippines in the winter. The grey-faced buzzard is listed in Appendix II of the “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora”, an international treaty drawn up in 1973.

The Forest and Nature Conservation Award is conferred annually by the COA to honor those who promote the sustainable use and conservation of Taiwan’s natural resources. In 2006, another Research Fellow from the Biodiversity Research Center, Dr. Chang-Po Chen also received the award.