The Scientists Behind Restoring Earth

Field Museum scientists’ work is featured throughout Restoring Earth. We invite you to meet some of those scientists who approach their jobs with inquiry and passion. We asked our scientists three questions about conservation and their jobs. The answers are as wide and varied as the work they do.

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Debra Moskovits, PhD, Senior Vice President, Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo)

1. What does conservation mean to you?

Conservation begins with respect for all species, including our own. For me, it means protecting our natural environment, so that all of us can thrive.

2. Why should people care about conservation?

Our own quality of life—health, resilience, comfort, beauty—depends on healthy natural environments.

3. Why do you love your job?

I love putting science to work, conserving vast expanses of forests and seeing the Museum put its knowledge and collections resources into securing diversity for the future.

Corine Vriesendorp, Director, Rapid Inventories and Conservation Tools, ECCo

1. What does conservation mean to you?

Wild places. Responsibility. A future chock full of diverse plants, animals, people and cultures.

2. Why should people care about conservation?

If we don’t our world will be less wild, less bright, and dominated by a few species—a culture of weeds.

3. Why do you love your job?

That sense of wonder and awe I feel in being in wild places—here in Chicago or in tropical forests—eyes wide open, ears alert, and spirit buoyant with the idea that something fantastic could happen at any moment.

Laurel Ross, Urban Conservation Director, ECCo

1. What does conservation mean to you?

Conservation means taking action to protect nature on Earth and to restore those elements that have been damaged. It also means reconnecting people with nature and restoring the relationship between humans and our landscape.

2. Why should people care about conservation?

People who care about the future of our world should care about conservation because protecting and restoring nature is key to the quality of our lives and all life on Earth.

3. Why do you love your job?

It gives me the opportunity to do important work with people who share my passion for biodiversity.

Mark Westneat, PhD, Curator of Zoology; Robert A. Pritzker Director, Biodiversity Synthesis Center

1. What does conservation mean to you?

Conservation has several important facets: awareness of biodiversity and the life around us, knowledge of biology and how humans impact living systems, and action—the willingness to take steps to reduce negative human impact on biodiversity and the environment.

2. Why should people care about conservation?

Because we are polluting our own air and water, driving many species to extinction, and threatening rainforests and reefs—two of the most beautiful habitats on Earth.

3. Why do you love your job?

I enjoy talking with interesting people (particularly students!), I get to go on great trips to coral reefs all around the world, and I really like trying to find answers to puzzling questions in biology like, “Why are coral reefs home to so many species?”

Joshua Drew, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biodiversity Synthesis Center

1. What does conservation mean to you?

Conservation is about preserving the staggering diversity of life.

2. Why should people care about conservation?

Protecting biodiversity provides economic, environmental, and social benefits. So much of what we know, and what we use originated in nature. When we lose that biodiversity we lose the raw material needed to react to future situations.

3. Why do you love your job?

I love my job because it gives me an opportunity to ask interesting questions, to travel to wild places. At the end of the day I know my work, in some small way, has helped make the world a better place.

Larry Heaney, PhD, Curator and Head, Division of Mammals

1. What does conservation mean to you?

Creating a stable environment, for all species, because humans depend on stability for survival.

2. Why should people care about conservation?

Because human society gains from conservation, and people benefit individually, both economically and emotionally.

3. Why do you love your job?

Nowhere else could I spend most of my time doing things that matter deeply to me, which I also find utterly enjoyable. I take great pleasure in the process of discovery, and in telling other people about those discoveries, and explaining why they are exciting and useful.

Rüdiger Bieler, PhD, Curator & Head of Division of Invertebrates

1. What does conservation mean to you?

To me, conservation involves recognizing, understanding, and – as far as we can – protecting the diversity of organisms on this planet.

2. Why should people care about conservation?

We are the only species on this planet with the means (and at times, it seems, the intent) to mess it up. Each human generation gets a brief opportunity to weigh in on the balance between protecting and destroying the diversity of life on Earth. Our generation has a particularly bad score card. Conserving biodiversity means much more than the warm fuzzy feeling of having been a good steward. It means not losing future opportunities of interaction, learning, and potential resources—including food and medical applications we cannot even yet dream about.

3. Why do you love your job?

Because it allows me to do original biodiversity research (which often involves travel to remote regions and results in the discovery of previously unknown species), while helping to train the next generation of conservation-minded scientists and having the opportunity to share the process and results of this research with general audiences.