Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy has been Counselor to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., for Biodiversity and Environmental Affairs, essentially the #2 position at this prestigious national resource. From 1973-1987, he directed the science programs of the World Wildlife Fund-US, during which time he helped bring tropical rainforests and issues of conservation biology to widespread public attention. As the Journal excerpts relate, in the late 1970’s, he devised the “Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project,” a large-scale, ambitious and ongoing joint Smithsonian-Brazilian experiment designed to provide objective scientific evidence about rainforests and the consequences of changes in land use. In 1988, he became the first environmentalist to receive Brazil’s “Order of Rio Branco.”