Buzz Holling Retires
This
article was originally printed in the December 1999 issue of CLASnotes.
To recognize and celebrate the retirement of the Arthur R. Marshall Jr. Chair in Ecological Sciences Crawford S. "Buzz" Holling, the Department of Zoology hosted a lecture, reception and dinner in his honor on September 30th. Dr. Carl Walters, a distinguished ecologist and long-time colleague and friend from the University of British Columbia gave a lecture on "Tales from the Foraging Arena," a presentation on the interactions between individual and ecosystem level research in fisheries biology. The lecture was followed by a reception at the Keene Faculty Center. The lecture and reception were attended by members of the Arthur R. Marshall Jr. family, colleagues from the Southwestern Water Management District and other areas of the State, as well as faculty and graduate students from many UF departments and colleges.
Holling came to UF as an Eminent Scholar ten years ago from the University of British Columbia, and since his arrival, he has won more than $4.8 million in research and program grants, staged nine workshops on the Everglades for more than 160 scientists, corporate leaders, public officials, and managers and public interest groups, trained 140 graduate students in ecosystem research, and created an information and policy "Resilience Network" of scientists, business persons, government officials and public interest groups that focuses on sustainable development in 10 countries and 17 regions.
"The Eminent Scholar Program of SUS brought me here," Holling explained. "It is a rare resource for UF. My colleagues in the Department of Zoology, in other Departments of CLAS, and in Forestry and Wildlife, Environmental Engineering and Agricultural Economics, kept me here. Together they, and a fine group of graduate students, provided an environment of excellence and cooperation that made my ten years at UF a wonderful and personally fulfilling journey of discovery."
In August of this year, Holling was awarded for "outstanding contributions to the science of Ecology" with the Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America.
Holling will occupy his Bartram Hall office for at least the next year to continue his work with the ongoing $1.5 million Resilience Project. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Resilience project is in its third and final year, and seeks to develop a theory that integrates ecology, economics and the social sciences with environmental resource management and policy-making.
Holling's Resilience work has provided the basis for a new project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, designed to take Resilience discoveries and put them into practice around the world by conducting training courses and workshops, and by using the Web to develop integrative communications on issues of sustainability and regional development.
Other Holling projects have had dramatic effects closer to home. Through Everglades workshops he organized in the early part of this decade, Holling brought together key people in US and State government agencies, and non-governmental groups to develop sophisticated and detailed computer models of the Everglades ecosystem. These electronic models so convincingly portrayed the Everglades' pivotal importance and its potential for restoration, that present restoration efforts plans have been formed from them.
Though passionate about his life's work in science and conservation, and, by extension, public well-being, Holling says he'll enjoy having more time to pursue his artistic passion, creating sculptures that capture some of the essence of the patterns in nature his scientific studies have revealed.
