Tim R. McClanahan, Ph.D.

Senior Conservation Zoologist, Director Coral Reef Programs, Wildlife Conservation Society

Tim McClanahan is a Senior Conservation Zoologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, where he has worked for the past 16 years. He is interested in the interdisciplinary field of ecology, fisheries and the sustainable management of coral reefs, but also enjoys crossing sub-disciplines in order to solve broader conservation science issues.

Consequently, in the past 25 years Tim's research has evolved from an early focus on prioritizing the effects that humans have on coral reefs and the role that marine protected areas play in conserving biological diversity and ecological processes, to developing theoretical and simulation models of coral reefs that will help predict and suggest alternatives to reduce detrimental effects, to developing practical means to restore degraded reefs through manipulation of the food web and management.

Tim is studying the potential interaction between global climate change and coral reef management. He has published 85 peer-reviewed journal articles, 17 book chapters, four edited books (2 are in press) and 37 other publications including popular articles, editorials and book reviews. The International Scientific Information Institute (ISI) reported that he has been the second most productive and cited coral reef scientist over the past 10 years. This work has received international attention and, in 1996, he was awarded the prestigious Pew Scholars in the Environment Award for his research and conservation efforts – awarded annually to five outstanding global, marine leaders who are working to preserve and protect the world’s oceans and marine species.

Tim's work at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) includes capacity building and applied conservation. For example, he has supervised 24 graduate-level theses from a wide range of colleges and universities and maintained a regional internship program that has intensively trained 17 young recent graduates and government officers from the western Indian Ocean countries in coral reef field methods. This internship program has developed a young cadre of coral reef field scientists using and sharing data from similar field methods and most of these interns have gone on to do graduate studies in coral reef ecology and fisheries.

He has worked to develop the coral reef programs of WCS including coral reef and fisheries programs in Belize, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. The Belizean program has maintained a coral reef monitoring and experimentation program since 1994, where the focus has been the interaction between fishing, pollution and climate change.

Tim's work in Indonesia has focused on the role of traditional and national parks effects on biodiversity. McClanahan has also indirectly educated and participated in academic scholarship through a number of books. For example, he edited two completed text books entitled East African Ecosystems and their Conservation (pp. 452, Oxford University Press, 1996) and Coral Reefs of the Indian Ocean: Their Ecology and Conservation (pp. 530, Oxford University Press, 2002).

Two additional books by Tim, Food Webs and the Dynamics of Marine Benthic Ecosystems and Fisheries Management: Progress towards Sustainability (eds. McClanahan, T.R. and Castilla, J.C.), are in press. These books review much of the scientific literature on these subjects and are important graduate-level reference and teaching texts. He is also on the editorial boards of a number of leading international journals, namely Marine Ecology Progress Series, Ecosystems, Environmental Conservation and Aquatic Conservation.

Tim has played other non-teaching roles in capacity building. For example, in 1997, as part of the International Year of the Reef, he organized a five-day workshop titled Coral Reefs of the Western Indian Ocean. This meeting assembled approximately 50 of the leading investigators and managers of coral reefs in the region to discuss the status and future of coral reef conservation and management. This workshop led to the above-mentioned text and a number of collaborative investigations among participants. In 2005, he organized a regional survey of socioeconomics of fishing communities in the western Indian Ocean, which was preceded by a training course.

Another example of capacity building is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which Tim instigated and drafted between Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI). This MOU has led to greater collaboration between marine researchers and park managers and resulted in a number of joint programs since it was ratified in 1993. McClanahan also works closely with the Kenyan park service, maintains a coral reef monitoring program and associated database for their marine parks, and developed a publication and meeting series that ensures that managers are aware of the progress of our research and its implications. This is the oldest monitoring program in the Western Indian Ocean with ecosystem-level data collected from 1987.

In 1995, Tim developed a co-management program between Kenya’s Fisheries Department and traditional fisheries leaders in southern Kenya where he collects data on fish catches and ecology and present these findings to these two groups. This co-management program led to the reduction of seine nets during 2000 in most study sites and reversed the decline of fish catches.

Most recently he is leading a group of investigators to determine the effects of the 1998 ENSO on coral reefs and fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean. This group is in the process of repeating surveys of corals and fish before and after 1998 and completing a meta-analysis of the fish and corals in the region. There are also efforts to develop a regional partnership to monitor coral bleaching and its effects.

SAYS TIM:

"Research projects give me an opportunity to see many of the great underwater spectacles and document the state of coral reefs. Many of them are undergoing large changes associated with climatic disturbances and heavy fishing."