Miguel Álvarez del Toro

Miguel Carlos Francisco Álvarez del Toro (born August 23, 1917 in Colima , Colima , † August 2, 1996 in Ciudad de México ) was a Mexican zoologist.

Life

Álvarez del Toro grew up in Colima, where he was enthusiastic about the local fauna even as a child. In his youth he moved to the capital with his family. There he worked as a taxidermist at the newly founded Museo de la Flora y la Fauna Nacionales in the Chapultepec forest in the late 1930s and, despite his status as a young autodidact, even became deputy director. After the resignation of the old director, he left the museum in 1941. During this time he collected bird species in various places in Mexico for the American Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and undertook his first rainforest excursion in Oaxaca for this work .

In 1942 he got a job in Chiapas as a taxidermist at the Museo de Historia Natural , which the then governor of the state, Rafael Pascacio Gamboa , wanted to set up in Tuxtla Gutiérrez . Initially, Álvarez collected and designated vertebrates for the collection of the museum, which opened at the end of 1942, and the planned zoo. When Elisha Parker, director of the museum, died in 1944, Álvarez was his successor. He remained director of the Instituto de Historia Natural del Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas until the end of his life .

Álvarez del Toro taught at the Colegio de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas , and later also at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México . In Chiapas he played an essential role in nature conservation ; six of the state's eleven nature reserves are the result of his initiative. He was also director of the Tuxtla Gutiérrez jungle zoo for many years and developed its unusual concept in which animals live freely and the “most dangerous species in the world”, human visitors, are “locked up” and guarded. Since moving to El Zapotal, a wooded area in the southeast of the city, in 1980, this zoo has been named Zoológico Miguel Álvarez del Toro (ZOOMAT) in his honor .

Álvarez del Toro has published over 40 articles on Mexican bird species, including the pygmy rush claw ( Heliornis fulica ) and the guinea-pin ( Oreophasis derbianus ). He also published seven books, including his most important publication, the compendium Las aves de Chiapas ( Birds of Chiapas ) , first published in 1971 .

The species named after him include Pulex alvarezi (1958), Lepidophyma alvarezi (1975), Trogolaphysa toroi (1985), Cryptotriton alvarezdeltoroi (1987), Coniophanes alvarezi (1990), Anolis alvarezdeltorozi (1996) and Ceratozamia alvarezi (1999).

Since 1947 he was a member of the American Ornithologists' Union . In 1989 he received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize from the World Wildlife Fund , and in 1992 he received the Global 500 Award . He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo (1992) and the Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas (1993).

Web links

• Obituary (English; PDF file; 124 kB)
• Obituary (Spanish) ( Memento from December 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive )