British Ornithologists’ Union – Godman Salvin Prize

Abstract

As a child growing up deep in the Midwest of the United States, it was perhaps unlikely that young, tow-headed P. Dee Boersma dreamed of a lifetime spent in remote field locations in the southern hemisphere focusing her intensely inquisitive mind on black and white flightless avifauna. But, it's penguins (with some other species thrown in here and there for good measure) that have been what the still tow-headed Dr P. Dee Boersma has devoted her life to. And in their own way, the thousands – perhaps millions – of penguins that Dee has observed and collected data from over the last 50+ years, and indeed, all species of penguins on our globe, send a raucous thank you to her years of devotion to their cause. Dee's commitment to penguins has influenced policy of governments at multiple levels, contributed to the development and success of a suite of students under her tutelage, inspired countless field volunteers and other lay people to fight for all wild animals and places, and has left an indelible mark of how natural history field research is fundamental to the conservation of all species.

Having obtained a Bachelors of Science with Honours from Central Michigan University in 1969, Dee embarked on what can only be described as an incredible field adventure culminating in a PhD in Zoology from The Ohio State University. Her dissertation, entitled ‘The Galapagos Penguin: A Study of Adaptations for Life in an Unpredictable Environment’, was the result of multiple visits to those remote Galapagos Islands from 1970 to 1972, which at first found her camping alone at Pta. Espinosa, Fernandina, for weeks at a time, focusing her energy in beginning to understand why these amazing penguins so near to the equator continued to persist. Such a solo adventure would probably not be possible for a young scientist today, and indeed, her advisor insisted she take a field assistant on future visits. But, solo or otherwise, even at the start of her career, Dee Boersma was extraordinary, driven and intensely focused on her goals. Fifty+ years later, those traits persist.

With PhD in hand, in 1974 Dee migrated westward to the Pacific coast of the US and joined the Department of Zoology at the University of Washington, spending time in numerous departments and programmes across campus, and working her way to Professor of Zoology in 1988 (to be transferred to Professor of Biology in 1993). After a 10-year foray in the wilds of Alaska, with fork-tailed storm petrels the focus of her always intense passion for life in the field, Dee was asked to return to her roots and the penguins of the south, but this time in Argentina. With pressure from the world of international fashion's desire to use the leather of Magellanic penguins for golfing gloves, Dee was asked to initiate studies on the close cousins of her beloved Galapagos penguins, to provide scientific data to influence the Argentine government to not collect penguins for gloves. With her data contributing to the successful denial of penguin harvesting, Dee never looked back, and has spent more than 40 years returning to her beloved Punta Tombo and the Magellanic penguins of Patagonia. In addition, after a multi-year hiatus, Dee also returned to her literal research birthplace in the Galapagos and has added a second amazing long-term data set to her Magellanic penguins, documenting the survival of the northern-most penguin species, and building them nests out of lava in a place where perhaps they just shouldn't really be able to survive. But there they are. Never hugely abundant, but always seeming to persist ….

Back in Argentina in the early years there, Dee, her students and countless volunteers spent hours walking hundreds of kilometres of the Patagonian coastline, recording what ultimately were thousands of oiled penguin carcasses on the wind-swept beaches. With those data in hand and the famous tenacity that is the Boersma style, the Argentine government ultimately passed laws to push the oil tanker lines farther offshore. That relatively simple solution resulted in a near complete elimination of oiling in penguins off the Patagonian coast of Argentina. No computer modelling, no technical satellite tracking. Simply feet on the ground and hours on the clock along the Patagonian coastline. Basic solid science. Ultimately, years later, more solid data from the Boersma lab contributed to the creation of one of the first coastal zone marine protected areas off the coast of South America!

Years of painstakingly monitoring breeding success of individuals – going year after year to see if ‘those birds’ again returned to ‘that nest’ – has created a long-term database that has few equals. One jokes with Dee that there are still thousands of questions to be answered in the hundreds of field data books that are now a part of a database of epic proportions – again, collected from hundreds of feet on the ground and hours … no, years … of data collection. But she and her team continue to return to Punta Tombo, to continue to collect more data to answer more questions.

What questions have been examined in these 40+ years? A perusal of her recent CV tells us there are two books, 28 book chapters, more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications and myriad pieces in the popular press for which a summary here will be woefully inadequate. Data from her lab have shown where penguins go when out at sea both during their breeding seasons and during the long winter months. The importance of the time at sea, inherently more difficult to measure than time on land, has been made clearer from the many penguins that have assisted in the collection of these data. As well, the natural history of Magellanic penguins is now much more understood: who mates with who? … why? … how long? And, with years of repeated data from many individuals, the ability to examine how environmental conditions and anthropogenic activities affect the success of Magellanic penguins and their lifetime reproductive success is impressive … as these penguins can live upwards of 30 years! And, now, with human activities driving changes at the global level, 40+ years of data provide the power to begin to quantify how global climate change can affect species.

It is rare to find a life lived as Dee Boersma has lived hers. And while her published work should speak for itself, her long list of awards and honours speak further to her success and influence. Highlights include being chosen as a Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment, a Leopold Fellow, AAAS Fellow, the recipient of the 15th Heinz Award for the Environment, a Fulbright Senior Fellowship to the University of Otago, New Zealand, the Pacific Seabird Group Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lifelong Learning Award from the University of Washington, and election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. It is therefore quite exciting and appropriate to have her name added to the esteemed list of recipients of the Godman-Salvin Prize from the British Ornithologists' Union for her lifetime of work in the study of not only penguins, but for her overall contribution to the understanding of how best we should work to conserve all species for which we share this planet.

Brian G. Walker