Tim Treuer
AYEA Grad ’06, Anchorage
What did you do with AYEA in high school?
As a part of AYEA I helped with a few different projects and trainings, including the Civics Summit, the Summer Get Together and the Letter to Our Leaders Campaign. It was also through AYEA that I got to attend a Youth Eco Forum in Iceland the summer before my senior year.
What have you been up to since high school?
Since high school, I’ve gotten a degree in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard, and have been working on several different field projects in tropical ecology. Most recently I returned from a year in Kalimantan (the Indonesian side of Borneo), where I was looking at the optimal methods of reforestation as well as how illegal logging effects the abundance of dangerous mosquito species. This fall I’ll be starting a Ph.D in ecology, hopefully looking at some related questions.
So, you’re a scientist, but you also just went to Juneau and you’ve been to DC to advocate for issues you care about. What’s the deal? What do you think about science and advocacy (or maybe scientists and advocacy)?
I think there is a really sad tendency for scientists to sequester themselves in ivory towers and avoid engaging in real world problems. I strongly believe that with knowledge comes moral obligation. Our generation is going to face several profound and interrelated ecological challenges of a magnitude that we’ve never seen before, and dealing with them is going to require massive effort, including mustering the political will to create unprecedented global accords and national legislation. I think there’s a tendency for scientists to avoid the morass of policy and politics, and as a result we have one political party that’s militantly science-ignorant and another that’s embarrassingly science-apathetic.
And it’s not like all scientists must immediately pull a James Hansen and go chain themselves to a coal plant. However, I do think it’s important for scientists to make their voices heard outside of their own circles. Ever since my first Civics Summit with AYEA in 2006, I’ve jumped at every lobbying opportunity that’s come my way–in Juneau, DC and elsewhere. Speaking out in policy or public forums is something that I’m going to make sure I am able to continue as I march further into the realm of academia.
What are your future goals?
So for almost as long as I’ve aspired to finish a Ph.D, I’ve had this dream of working on a project or starting an NGO that focuses on protecting and restoring critical habitat in biodiversity hot spots. There’s a lot of abandoned degraded land in these areas, and when combined with the right mix of remnant habitat fragments and a lot of TLC, I believe they can become effective units of biodiversity conservation that help stem the extinction crisis we’re now experiencing.
Words of wisdom for current AYEA teens
One of my favorite quotes from a scientist: “Hope, real hope, comes from doing the things before us that need to be done in the spirit of thankfulness and celebration, without worrying whether we will win or lose.”
