Former ATBC President William Laurance has been elected to a prestigious endowed chair at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands.

Professor Laurance will hold the Prince Bernhard Chair for International Nature Conservation for a period of five years, spending one month per year in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe.

A total of 42 applicants from 22 nations applied for the Chair, which is co-funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Laurance will carry out research on tropical conservation and share his knowledge with Dutch and European conservationists, students, researchers and policy-makers, beginning in June 2010.

Laurance is Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, and formerly a Senior Staff Scientist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He has spent more than a quarter of a century working in the Amazon, the Congo Basin, New Guinea and Southeast Asia.

Last year Laurance co-won the prestigious BBVA Frontiers in Ecology and Conservation Biology Award. His co-winner, Thomas Lovejoy, is also a former ATBC President.

Stop forest loss

Laurance says he is delighted by his appointment:

'I am greatly looking forward to working with European researchers on the theme of nature conservation in the tropics. Tropical rainforests all over the world are under extreme pressure. As scientists, we cannot permit ourselves to stand by and watch the devastation continue. Researchers and scientists also have a duty to try to persuade governments, policy-makers and the wider public to take steps to halt the destruction of these forests. If we do nothing, my fear is that our children will turn round to us one day and say: why did you do nothing to stop deforestation?'

Raise awareness

The Price Bernhard Chair for Nature Conservation was established in 1986 to honour the late Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands for his contribution to international nature conservation on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Prince Bernhard was a founder and the first president of WWF. The purpose of the Chair is to raise awareness of nature conservation among students, strengthen the research base for nature conservation and consolidate the links between scientific theory and practice.