Thomas M. Butynski

Thomas Michael Butynski (born March 26, 1948 ) is an American wildlife ecologist , conservation biologist and primatologist who has lived and worked in Africa since the early 1970s.

Life

Butynski grew up on a farm in Greenfield , western Massachusetts . In 1970 he received a Bachelor of Science degree in wildlife biology from the University of Massachusetts , in 1975 he received a Master of Science degree in wildlife ecology from Michigan State University in Botswana with the thesis Nocturnal ecology of the springhare, Pedetes capensis, and in 1978 he graduated from the same University for Ph.D. PhD in wildlife ecology. His dissertation is entitled Ecological studies on the springhare pedetes capensis in Botswana . From 1970 to 1974 Butynski worked as a Peace Corps volunteer and wildlife biologist for the Tourism and National Park Administration of Botswana. From 1978 to 1993 he was visiting professor at the Department of Zoology at Makerere University in Uganda. From 1978 to 1984 he was a postdoctoral researcher in primate ecology in the Kibale Forest in Uganda and at Rockefeller University in New York City. From 1986 to 1993 he was head of the Impenetrable Forest Conservation Project in Uganda. From 1991 to 1993 he was director of the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Uganda. In 1992 Butynski was made Honorary National Park Administrator of Uganda National Parks for Life. In 1995 he was the founder of the journal African Primates of the IUCN / SSC Primate Specialist Group and its editor until 2006. In 1998, Butynski began working on the six-volume Mammals of Africa by Jonathan Kingdon , which was published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing . Since 2004 he has been deputy director of the Eastern Africa Primate Diversity and Conservation Program alongside Yvonne de Jong. From 2010 to 2013 Butynski was Director of the King Khalid Wildlife Research Center in Saudi Arabia . Since 2013 he has been head of the Lolldaiga Hills Research Program in Kenya, which deals with the documentation of biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources in the Lolldaiga Hills, which are located near Mount Kenya .

In May 1996 the biologist John A. Hart from the Wildlife Conservation Society succeeded in rediscovering a female of the Congo Mask Owl ( Phodilus prigoginei ) in the Itombwe massif in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which had been thought missing since 1951 . This specimen was caught with a Japanese net, examined, photographed by Butynski and then released again. In 2006 Butynski was one of the first to describe the Kipunji monkey ( Rungwecebus kipunji ).

Publications (selection)

• Assessment of the Diversity of African Primates In: International Journal of Primatology, Vol. 24, No. 6, December 2003 (with Peter Grubb , John F. Oates, Simon K. Bearder, Todd R. Disotell, Colin P. Groves, and Thomas T. Struhsaker)
• Consuming Nature: A Photo Essay on African Rain Forest Exploitation , 2003 (with Anthony L. Rose, Russell Mittermeier , Olivier Langrand , Okyeame Ampadu-Agyei and Karl Ammann )
• West African chimpanzees: status survey and conservation action plan , 2003 (with Mohamed I. Bakarr, Christophe Boesch, Rebecca Kormos, IUCN / SSC Primate Specialist Group)
• Mammals of Africa , 2013 (with Jonathan Kingdon, David Happold, Meredith Happold, Michael Hoffmann, Jan Kalina)
• Out of Africa, but how and when? : the case of hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) In: Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 76 (2014), pp. 154–164 (with Gisela H. Kopp, Christian Roos, Derek E. Wildman, Abdulaziz N. Alagaili)
• Primates of East Africa: Pocket Identification Guide (with Yvonne A. De Jong, illustrations by Stephen D. Nash ), 2018

Web links

• Curriculum Vitae Thomas M. Butynski (PDF, online)
• Employee profile on the Lolldaiga Hills Research Program website