October 1, 2009
UW’s Dee Boersma honored by Heinz Foundation
UW conservationist Dee Boersma is among 10 recipients of the Heinz Family Foundation awards given to people whose achievements have fostered a cleaner, greener and more sustainable world.
Each recipient will receive $100,000 and a medallion inscribed with the image of the late Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., whose environmental legacy is commemorated by the awards.
Boersma, a UW biology professor who holds the Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science, is being honored for her extensive field study of penguins and other sea birds to promote conservation and understanding human impact on marine environments.
For more than 25 years she has operated the Penguin Project, studying Magellanic penguins at the Punta Tombo reserve in Argentina. She has dubbed the penguins “marine sentinels” for their warning signs about the ocean environment.
Her recent work has shown that, because of climate change and other factors, during the critical period of egg incubation the penguins at Punta Tombo must swim an average of 25 miles further in search of food than they did just 10 years ago.
The Heinz Foundation also cited Boersma for launching Conservation Magazine, a publication she sees as building better public communication on issues of the natural world (see www.conservationmagazine.org).
The awards were established in 1993 to honor Heinz’s legacy on environmental issues.
