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| Ursula Valdez |
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| Tim Billo |
Ursula Valdez, a native of Peru, is an experienced tropical ornithologist and conservationist. She graduated from the department of Biology at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina in Peru. She obtained a MSc degree in Zoology and Animal behavior at North Carolina State University studying raptor communities in Manu Biosphere Reserve.
Ursula is currently a PhD candidate in Biology at the University of Washington where she is studying the ecology and habitat use of Forest-falcons in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon. She worked in Peru and Panama as a raptor biologist and was the Director of the Neotropical Environmental Education Program of The Peregrine Fund. She has conducted ornithological research and conservation projects in Peru, Ecuador, Spain and the US. She has been an instructor in tropical ecology courses in Peru and Costa Rica. Recently she started a series of field courses in ornithology for Latin American students. She is also a committed conservationist and active in finding ways to lower our ecological footprint.
Tim Billo received his B.A. in biology from Williams College in western Massachussetts. His undergraduate research focused on the ecology of the forest flora of that region. Tim is currently a PhD Candidate in the Biology Department at the University of Washington. His dissertation research takes him to the tropical rainforests of Panama and Costa Rica, where he is studying the behavior and biogeography of two species of birds which hybridize where their ranges meet and overlap. He is also involved with the description and conservation of closely related subspecies of the same birds isolated on nearby coastal islands. In conjunction with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Organization for Tropical Studies, Tim has also developed and led community-based environmental education programs in Costa Rica and Panama.
Tim's summers are spent in Washington's Cascades and Olympics where he enjoys mountaineering and backpacking. He directs and leads a month-long wilderness education program for high school students in the backcountry of Olympic National Park. Tim is currently certified as a Wilderness First Responder.
Tim is an avid naturalist, teacher, and world traveler, and is excited to share his knowledge of tropical biology and conservation with students on this course.
John Edwards grew up in New Zealand, where he became addicted to mountaineering and alpine ecology. After doctoral studies at Cambridge England he moved in 1962 to Western Reserve University in Cleveland and then to UW in 1967. His research has been mainly on physiology, development and ecology of insects. Studies of alpine and subpolar insect ecology have taken him to Norway, North Greenland, the Alaska Range and North Slope, the Antarctic Peninsula, Venezuelan Andes, and nearer to UW, the North Cascades and Mt Rainier. The eruption of Mt Saint Helens in 1980 provided a natural experiment in ecological regeneration and those studies led to expeditions to volcanoes in Java and New Guinea. He also has studied the work of the great 19th century biological explorer Alexander von Humboldt who pioneered research in the areas we will visit.
John is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biology.
Last modified: 1/07/2008 7:09 PM