Erik Meijaard

Erik Meijaard (* 1967 in Haarlem , Netherlands ) is a Dutch biologist and conservationist . His main research interests are the mammals of western Indonesia .

Life

In 1986 Meijaard obtained a bachelor's degree in environmental sciences from Wageningen University . In 1990 he received another bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Amsterdam . From 1990 to 1994 he studied tropical ecology at the University of Wageningen and at the University of Amsterdam, where he received his Master of Science degree. After studying at the Australian National University from 2000, he was awarded a Ph.D. in 2004. PhD in biological anthropology . From April 1994 to June 1997 he worked as an ecologist at the Tropenbos Kalimantan Project in Indonesia, where he was involved in studying the distribution patterns of large mammals in Borneo and Sumatra , investigating the illegal trade in species, and confiscating illegally kept wild animals. From October 1997 to January 1999 he was program coordinator of the Dutch section of the World Wildlife Fund (WNF). He planned and managed projects in Indonesia with the aim of conserving forests, coral reefs and endangered animal species and he coordinated the bilateral cooperation between WNF and WWF Indonesia. In 1999 the book Our Vanishing Relative: The Status of Wild Orang-Utans at the Close of the Twentieth Century , a report on the decline in orangutan populations , was published on behalf of the conservation organization Tropenbos International. From June 2002 to May 2004 he was a consultant at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR, Indonesia). He was the co-editor and co-author of the book Life after logging: reconciling wildlife conservation and production forestry in Indonesian Borneo , published in 2005, and has written numerous articles on vertebrate diversity in Kalimantan Timur and the effects of timber harvesting and other factors related to deforestation on the Biodiversity . From March 2006 to July 2009 he was involved in various Indonesia programs of the nature conservation organization The Nature Conservancy . This included all Borneo projects of the Orangutan Conservation Support Program (OCSP) and the management of the forest protection programs in Borneo, Sulawesi and Papua . Since 2009 he has been the Forest Director of The Nature Conservancy's forest program. From January 2012 to December 2014 he was a visiting researcher at the Center for International Forestry Research, where he worked with students on a variety of forest research projects. From August 2009 to June 2015 he was a senior consultant for environmental planning, sustainable forest management, animal welfare , mining , plantation management, organizational planning, budgeting and the REDD + program of People & Nature Consulting International. In March 2011 he founded the environmental institute Borneo Futures, which is committed to providing better information about endangered species and sustainable agricultural use on Borneo. In 2015, Meijaard was a professor at the University of Brunei Darussalam . From February 2016 to June 2017 he was the director of the environmental protection company Habitat Hutan Alam Indonesia in Jakarta . Since June 2017 he has been Honorary Professor at the Center of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) at the University of Queensland .

In 2004, Meijaard and Colin Groves presented a revision study of the genus Tragulus in the deer piglet family . The greater mouse-deer ( Tragulus Napu ) eight subspecies recognized, instead of the previous 27, and the Vietnam Kantschil ( Tragulus versicolor ), which long was considered a subspecies of chevrotain, was elevated to the species status. Only a year later, Meijaard and Groves described the yellow striped Kantschil ( Moschiola kathygre ). In 2011 Meijaard wrote the chapter on the deer piglets and he co-authored the chapter on pigs (Suidae) in the second volume of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World . In 2017 Meijaard was one of the first to describe the Tapanuli orangutan ( Pongo tapanuliensis ). In the same year Meijaard published a study on the Thailand Kantschil ( Tragulus williamsoni ). It was long considered a synonym or subspecies of the small Kantschil ( Tragulus kanchil ), the skull size of the type specimen collected in 1916 and new information about a specimen from Xishuangbanna , Yunnan Province , China, prompted Meijaard to consider it as an independent species.

Meijaard is married to the biologist Rona Anne Dennis. The couple have a daughter.

Web links

• Curriculum Vitae (as of 2017)
• LinkedIn profile

Individual evidence

1. ^ E. Meijaard & CP Groves: A taxonomic revision of the Tragulus mouse-deer (Artiodactyla). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 140 (1), 2004, pp. 63-102.
2. ↑ Frederick Nutter Chasen: A handlist of Malaysian mammals. A systematic list of the mammals of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo and Java, including the adjacent small islands. Bulletin of the Raffles Museum, Singapore, Strait Settlements 15, 1940, pp. 1-209.
3. ↑ Erk Meijaard, Marcus AH Chua & JW Duckworth: Is the northern chevrotain, Tragulus williamsoni Kloss, 1916, a synonym or one of the least-documented mammal species in Asia ?. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology. 65, 2017, pp. 506-514.