Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofitpublishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access tocritical research.
In Memoriam Jorge Enrique Saliva-GonzalezAuthor(s): Joanna BurgerSource: Waterbirds, 35(3):498-501. 2012.Published By: The Waterbird SocietyDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1675/063.035.0317URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1675/063.035.0317
BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in thebiological, ecological, and environmental sciences. BioOne provides a sustainableonline platform for over 170 journals and books published by nonprofit societies,associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated contentindicates your acceptance of BioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/terms_of_use.
Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiries or rights and permissions requests should bedirected to the individual publisher as copyright holder.
498
IN MEMORIAM JORGE ENRIQUE SALIVA-GONZALEZFebruary 21, 1963 – July 23, 2012
Colonial waterbird biologists, ornitholo-gists, conservationists, United States Fish and Wildlife Service personnel, his family, and many others were saddened by the un-timely and unexpected death of Jorge En-rique Saliva-Gonzalez. Jorge was a passion-ate, caring, insightful biologist who was able to actively protect, preserve, and investigate a wide range of birds and marine mammals. He was a member of the Caribbean Ecologi-cal Services Field Office of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an active member in the Waterbird Society, and a life-long biologist devoted to saving and preserving all birds in their natural environments. He was sta-tioned at Boquerón, Puerto Rico.
Jorge grew up in Ponce, Puerto, attended the Ponce High School, and graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus with a Bachelor of Science (cum laude, 1985). During his undergraduate years he studied the Puerto Rican Ground Lizard. He obtained a Master of Science in Ecology and Evolution (1989, Rutgers Uni-versity, New Brunswick, New Jersey), and a Doctor of Philosophy in the same program in 1995. During his Rutgers years he was a teaching assistant, and helped with many
research projects on Pine Snakes, Pipng Plover, and other shorebirds. For his PhD dissertation he studied Sooty Tern nesting ecology on Culebra Island. He began work-ing for the USFWS at the Caribbean Ecologi-cal Field Office in July of 1990, and contin-ued there until his death. His main work was with endangered species in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and he worked on many endangered and threatened species, such as Brown Pelican, Piping Plover, Puerto Rican Plain Pigeon, Broad-winged Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Yellow-shouldered Blackbird, and the Antillean Manatee.
He viewed himself as an endangered species biologist who “promoted and en-couraged the exchange of data on all can-didate, listed, and migratory bird species, in close coordination with other Federal and State agencies, Service Regional Of-fices, academic researchers, and other knowledgeable experts, to obtain and use the best scientific data in making decisions for management and conservation.” He was much more than that—he was a spark for many projects, a tireless field worker, a knowledgeable and creative thinker, and a good friend.
Jorge Saliva-Gonzalez; photograph by Jan Zegarra (credit: USFWS).
IN MEMORIAM JORGE ENRIQUE SALIVA-GONZALEZ 499
Jorge was devoted to gathering long-term data sets that provide the basis for wise man-agement and conservation of species. One
of the most significant projects was his study of the Roseate Tern in the Caribbean, where he conducted over 20 years of uninterrupted censuses and nesting studies. The information he gathered allowed the USFWS to develop a Recovery Plan and long-term strategies for this species in the Caribbean, and the larger North-east Region of the U.S. He worked tirelessly with biologists throughout the Western Hemi-sphere range of the Roseate Tern, providing necessary data and insights to contribute to continued management for years to come.
Other long-term studies involved a 15-year arial survey and telemetry of the Antillean Manatee. He recognized early on that reha-bilitation and rescue of Manatees was critical for their protection, and worked with the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Envi-ronmental Resources, the Caribbean Strand-ing Network (now the Puerto Rico Center for Manatee Conservation), and the Puerto Rico Zoo. He also collaborated for over 20 years on aerial surveys and nest counts of Brown Pelicans, contributing to our understanding of colony dynamics, colony site requirements, and the methods to safeguard breeding peli-cans from predators, people and habitat loss.
Jorge loved working with others on conser-vation projects, such as the Waterbird Conser-
Jorge Saliva-Gonzalez working on Pine Snake behavior, late 1980’s; photograph by J. Burger.
Jorge Saliva-Gonzalez working with Sandwich Terns; photograph by Jan Zegarra.
500 WATERBIRDS
vation for the Americas: the North American Conservation Plan (Kushlan et al. 2002). He collaborated with many biologists working on islands in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, including T. Agady, J. A. Collazo, D. J. Goch-feld, M. Gochfeld, E. E. Klaas, A, R, Lewis, H. Morales, R. Morris, I. Nisbet, J. Pierce, M. Rive-ra, B.A. Schreiver, D. A Shealer, J. Spendelow, T. Tallevast, J. Zegarra and me, among many, many others.
Recently, Jorge authored the 90-day find-ing for the Black-capped Petrel. He was also involved in the response to the Deepwater Ho-rizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, conduct-ing aerial surveys, helping to develop Natural Resources Damage Assessment, and providing technical assistance for the recovery.
Jorge was a member of the American Ornithologists Union, Association for Field Ornithologists, Waterbird Society, Cooper Ornithological Society, Society of Caribbean Ornithology, Sociedad Ornithological de Puerto Rico, Caribbean Stranding Network, and the Interagency Oceanaria Group. He ed-ited or reviewed for several journals, including The Auk, The Condor, Journal of Field Orni-thology, Caribbean Journal of Science, Water-birds, and for many M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses. He was a prolific scientist with over 25 refer-eed publications, and numerous reports and technical findings.
His family remembers his mischievous, generous, selfless, and humble nature, and rejoices in his life and accomplishments, not-ing that he taught them to love, appreciate, and protect nature. Any wrong words about
animals was quickly corrected. He was a loving son and brother to his sister Sandra and his brother Juan.
Many of us remember other things about Jorge that will keep him forever with us: his ready and infectious smile, his ambling walk around Rutgers Halls with a Pine Snake wound around his neck, his voluntary exile to his advi-sor’s house to write his thesis, his absolute joy at seeing snow for the first time, his wonderful pen and ink drawings, his expertly-executed and compelling batiks, his delicately-carved Roseate Tern decoys, his parrots, his ever pres-ent tropical fish tanks that sometimes num-bered over 20, his willingness to put us up at his house on short notice, often with our messy and smelly specimens, his willingness to help us with our projects, his almost daily treks to the gym, weight-lifting and racketball, his wild but expert boat captain role, his long hours in the field in the interest of monitoring and protecting populations, his trekking and ex-plorative nature, his prankster sense of humor, and the total devastation that accompanied the news of his untimely death.
Jorge will be deeply missed by his friends, colleagues, the conservation community, and the birds and mammals he devoted his life to preserving.
I thank Michael Gochfeld, Jan P. Degarra, Marelisa Rivera, Sandra and Juan Saliva, and Teresa Tallevast for photographs and helpful information for this memorial.
Joanna Burger, Rutgers University, August 1, 2012E-mail: [email protected]
Announcement of New Editor for Waterbirds, the Journal of the Waterbird Society
The Waterbird Society is very pleased to announce the appointment of Stephanie Jones as the next Editor of Waterbirds, effec-tive 1 January, 2013. Stephanie will be the first female editor of the journal. Stephanie’s editorial experience comes from her work as subject editor for the Studies in Avian Biology #34, the important and useful compendium of papers detailing methods for analysing nest success data. She also has served as series editor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Biological Technical Reports and subject editor for their Journal of Fish and Wildlife Manage-ment. For the past twenty years, Stephanie has served as the Nongame Migratory Bird Coor-dinator for USFWS Region 6. Previously, she worked for the US Forest Service in Shasta, California. Stephanie has broad experiences in reproductive biology and habitat selec-tion of birds. She has written status reports, Birds of North America species accounts, documents on population estimates of birds and memorials for ornithologists as well as
traditional scientific papers. In her letter of application to the society, Stephanie writes “I enthusiastically embrace that the peer-review process is absolutely critical in providing credible scientific research for the advance-ment of ornithology”. We are most happy to welcome Stephanie as the new Editor of the pre-eminent journal of the Waterbird Society.
Kindly direct all submissions and matters related to “Waterbirds” after 31 December, 2012 to:
Stephanie L. Jones Editor-in-Chief, “Waterbirds”U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceP.O. Box 25486 Denver Federal Center Denver, Colorado, 80225, USA
Telephone: 303-236-4409; Fax: 303-236-8680
E-mail: [email protected]
