John Fitzpatrick
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John W. Fitzpatrick is a native of St. Paul, Minnesota, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1974, and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. Since 1995 he has been Director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. Previously (1988-1995), he was Executive Director of Archbold Biological Station, a private ecological research foundation in central Florida. From 1978 to 1989 he was Curator of Birds and Chairman of the Department of Zoology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union, served as its President (2000-2002), and in 1985 received its highest research honor (Brewster Award) for his book Florida Scrub-Jay: Ecology and Demography of a Cooperative Breeding Bird, co-authored with the late Glen E. Woolfenden. This book described the ecology and social behavior of the endangered Florida Scrub-Jay, based on a long-term research project that continues through the present. During the 1970s and '80s Fitzpatrick also led numerous scientific expeditions to remote areas of South America, especially the western Amazonian basin and the Andean foothills. Among his 130+ scientific articles and books, he has published extensively on tropical American birds, including original descriptions of 7 new bird species he discovered. He is co-author of the book Neotropical Birds: Ecology and Conservation, and a principal author of the Handbook of Birds of the World, Volume 9. Fitzpatrick has been engaged in applying science to real-world conservation issues throughout his career. In central Florida, he helped design and implement a major network of ecological preserves and a new National Wildlife Refuge by engaging scientists, public agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private industry in the process. First author on the 2005 announcement of rediscovery of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas, he has led search efforts to locate breeding pairs of this iconic bird of the southeastern North American swamp forests. He has served on national governing boards of The Nature Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, on numerous professional and conservation panels, and on three Endangered Species Recovery Teams. He enjoys hiking and watercolor painting, has been a bird-watcher since kindergarten, and lives on a beautiful hillside near Ithaca, New York with his wife, Molly, and their two children, Sarah (1986) and Dylan (1988).