Dee Boersma is a conservation biologist and professor at the University of Washington. She is one of the world’s most recognized experts in seabirds.
Dr. Boersma completed her Ph.D. in Zoology with a thesis about Galapagos penguins. Since then she started her work to raise awareness on the consequences of pollution on penguins, specifically protecting them from oil spills and avoiding to destroy their nests’ sites.
Her most famous project – which started in 1982 and lasted until 2010 – is the “Magellanic Penguin Project”, when she studied for several years a penguins’ colony in Punta Tombo in Argentina.
With her project, Dr. Boersma showed that Magellanic penguins were threatened by pollution and climate change.
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Pollution in the form of oil spills was causing the death of several penguins of the colony. Dr. Boersma managed to prove the connection between tanker lanes lines and those deaths and to convince the authorities to move them further away from the shore.
Climate change was also heavily threatening penguins: with her studies, Dr. Boersma showed that the number of penguins in the colony was becoming significantly smaller as penguins were forced to swim further away – even 25 extra miles – in order to find food.
It’s a fantastic opportunity for Impakter to see how Dr. Boersma is shaping her future.
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