Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development in Southwest China

Jill Baumgartner is a joint Ph.D. candidate in Population Health Sciences and Land Resources studying environmental epidemiology and advised by Leonelo Bautista and Jonathan Patz. She completed her master's degree in Population and International Health at Harvard University and obtained her bachelors degree in International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jill was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sichuan Province, China, from 2000-2 where she designed and implemented four community health projects and served as a university lecturer. She has also conducted field work in Kenya, South Africa, and India. For her dissertation research in Yunnan, Jill has preliminary ideas about investigating the environmental and cardiovascular health implications of exposure to biomass combustion from indoor cooking and heating.

completed her B.S. in Environmental Science from Drexel University in 2001 and her M.S. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Broadly, her research interests encompass the conservation of biodiversity. She has been involved in field research projects involving threatened or endangered sea turtles, desert tortoises, freshwater turtles, Hawaiian honeycreepers, and threespine stickleback fish. She has also worked with invasive red-bellied slider turtles, brown tree snakes, and signal crayfish. For her Ph.D., she is working with Professor Tony Ives in the Zoology Department.

graduated with a BS from Abilene Christian University in 2004, where she had the opportunity to do field work on Lupinus texensis at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. She published a species report on Artibeus obscurus in the journal Mammalian Species in 2004. Since 2005, she has been living in Yunnan, studying Chinese at Yunnan University, and working with an international group focused on humanitarian issues. In 2006, she served in an internship at the Alpine Botanical Garden in Shangri-la, Yunnan. She is working with Dr Don Waller in the Botany Department.

(MA) is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is studying comparative politics and international relations with a focus on China. His primary areas of research interest include nongovernmental organizations, public participation, and environmental policy. Previously, he worked at the China Environment Forum (CEF), part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Since 2002 he has served as managing editor of CEF’s annual policy journal, the China Environment Series. His work has been published in the South China Morning Post, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The China Business Review, and various other policy journals. He received a B.A. in political science and Asian studies from St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He is working under the direction of Dr. Edward Friedman.

graduated from Cornell University with a BSc in 2001 and recently obtained a MSc from Oregon State University (2005). She has conducted field research on the role of fire on pine and old forest ecotones in the Dominican Republic, screened biocontrol agents for an invasive rangeland weed (Cynoglossum officinale) in Switzerland, and conducted field experiments to facilitate the reintroduction of golden paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta), a threatened species in the Pacific Northwest. She is working with Professor Joy Zedler, a specialist in wetland restoration.

Brian Robinson lived in Chengdu, Sichuan teaching environmental science and education at Sichuan University as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 2000- 2002. After living in China, he attended graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he earned masters degrees in City Planning and Environmental Engineering (2005) as well as gained project experience in Kenya, Mozambique, and India in water and sanitation planning and engineering. He is working with Professors Dan Bromley and David Lewis on rural livelihoods and natural resource management.