Media invitation and photo opportunity Date: Thursay 9 November Time: 14.00 – 16.00 Venue: The Macaulay Institute and Date: Friday 10 November Time: 1230 – 1400 (lunch before Macaulay Lecture begins) 1400 – 1530 (Lecture) Venue: AECC Media contact: Karen Sage, Tricker PR, tel: 07795 522 012

Interviews with Professor Sinclair and/or Doug and Thomas Macaulay can be undertaken by prior arrangement on the 10 November, by calling Karen Sage, Tricker PR, tel: 07795 522 012 or 01224 654087.

Professor Anthony Sinclair, world renowned African wildlife expert, is this year?s speaker at the 30th Macaulay Lecture.

He will talk about the lessons that can be learnt from human-wildlife conflicts in the Serengeti National Park, a unique area famous for the spectacular mass-migration each year of over a million wildebeest.

Until recently the Director of the Centre for Biodiversity Research at the University of British Columbia, Canada, Professor Sinclair has spent 40 years researching the ecosystem dynamics of the East African national park.

In reference to his wealth of experience, Professor Sinclair said: “Global warming and human interference in global biological systems present the two most serious trends challenging the future of our planet. They will affect the dynamics of our ecosystems and the conservation of species.

“I observed in the Serengeti system long-term trends in both the climate and human populations, and the profound changes in the system have provided a unique opportunity to understand how natural ecosystems work, what role biodiversity plays in the system and which human influences are threatening this biodiversity.

“In the Macaulay Lecture I will discuss how this unique record of events provides a valuable lesson for the conservation of world ecosystems.” Among the audience at the Lecture, which takes place on Friday 10 November at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, will be Thomas Bassett Macaulay and Douglas Hazen Macaulay, two of the grandsons of Macaulay Institute founder, Dr Thomas Bassett Macaulay.

The Macaulay Institute is the premier land use research institute in the UK. Two hundred and seventy staff are based at the Macaulay Institute at Craigiebuckler in Aberdeen. The Macaulay Institute aims to be an international leader in research on the use of rural land resources for the benefit of people and the environment and is involved in research across the globe; from Scotland to Chile and China. More about the Macaulay Institute can be found at www.macaulay.ac.uk.

Anyone wishing to attend the 30th Macaulay lecture should contact Jane Lund, events manager for the Macaulay Institute, on 01224 498200 or email j.lund@macaulay.ac.uk.

Ends

Origins of the Macaulay Lecture The Macaulay Institute was founded in 1930 through a benefaction from one of Canada?s Scottish sons, Dr Thomas Bassett Macaulay, of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada. His aim was to improve the productivity of Scottish agriculture. Dr Macaulay was a descendant of the Macaulays from the Island of Lewis, Scotland. He was true to his Hebridean roots throughout his life, often giving large donations to Lewis. The annual T.B. Macaulay Lecture was established to honour Dr Macaulay and his vision for sustainable agriculture.

Doug and Thomas Macaulay Born in 1929 and 1930 respectively, brothers Thomas Bassett Macaulay and Douglas Hazen Macaulay grew up in Hudson, 35 miles west of Montreal in Canada. There they literally lived in the shadow of their grandfather, T.B. Macaulay (founder of the Macaulay Institute), whose house and farm, where he kept a herd of 70 prize Holstein cattle, were situated at the top of the hill overlooking theirs.

Both grandsons attended McGill University and graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering, Doug in Electrical Engineering and Thomas in Mechanical, although Doug started his first year at Macdonald Agricultural College.

Neither pursued a career related to agriculture. Doug started his career working for the electronics division of Canadian General Electric in Toronto, later returning to Montreal and eventually joining the RCA Victor Company where he worked for the next 20 years before becoming a consultant engineer.

Thomas worked for a variety of different companies in the nuclear, industrial chemicals, industrial design and consulting and municipal engineering fields, before retiring in 2000 two weeks before his 71st birthday.

Dr Anthony Sinclair (extracted from ?Saving the Serengeti? by Hilary Thomson, Public Affairs, The University of British Columbia, at http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2005/05mar03/serengeti.html)

As a child in Africa, UBC zoologist Anthony Sinclair admired and collected the humble dung beetle, marking the start of a career that has spanned four decades, three continents and earned Sinclair membership in the Royal Society of London, an academy of the world?s most eminent researchers. A world expert in ecosystem dynamics, biodiversity and conservation biology, Sinclair has conducted experiments in areas ranging from Australia and New Zealand to the Yukon, but most of his work has focused on the Serengeti region of Tanzania, in eastern Africa.

Born and raised in Zambia, Sinclair?s earliest memories revolve around time spent as an intrepid investigator of bugs, birds and mammals. He soon learned to mix caution with curiosity, however, after meeting a leopard during a night-time foray at age eight.

Educated in Tanzania and fluent in Swahili, Sinclair was sent to secondary school in England — at that time a three-day plane journey away. He originally studied to be an engineer but by his own admission was an indifferent student.

All that changed when he decided to follow his heart and become a biologist. “It was just like pushing a button,” says the 61-year-old. “I roared ahead.” An apt description, indeed. After earning a PhD at Oxford University, Sinclair has conducted 40 years of landmark research that has helped define biodiversity science and made him one of the world?s most-cited investigators in the field of environment and ecology. But to hear Sinclair tell it, his career has mostly turned on luck.

History handed him his first lucky break in 1890 when Italians brought a cattle disease called rinderpest to Africa during the colonization of Ethiopia. African cattle had no immunity to the disease and ultimately 95 per cent of the continent?s population was wiped out. Authorities tried to combat the spread of the disease by killing infected animals. They couldn’t kill animals in the protected 30,000 sq. kms. Of Serengeti Park, however, and thus was born Sinclair?s living lab.

He started research in Serengeti in 1965, while still an undergraduate. The rinderpest outbreak and its effect on Africa’s ecosystem created a large-scale natural experiment for him to test his theories of fluctuations in animal populations. He has used the area to create an ecological baseline by measuring natural changes in biodiversity within the park and comparing this data to human-induced changes seen outside the area.

He spent a decade focused on African buffalo and wildebeest, monitoring their resurgence after rinderpest was wiped out. The wildebeest population increased six-fold in about a 15-year period and Sinclair recalls standing on hilltops seeing nothing but the black hides of wildebeest for 30 miles in any direction.

“The changes in wildebeest population in Serengeti changed everything — vegetation, food supply for predators and for humans,” says Sinclair. “This natural experiment proved that everything is linked and that all living things are connected in an ecosystem, a concept that is well understood now but was just emerging when I started my work.”

Sinclair spent 10 years in the Serengeti. In addition to his wildebeest studies, he also looked at how the region?s grassland changed to woodland because of ecosystem dynamics. Bushfires usually controlled growth of trees but wildebeest grazing had virtually eliminated fuel for the fires. Tree-munching elephants had also regulated tree growth, although extensive ivory poaching meant young trees could flourish.

When the political situation in Tanzania endangered his research — his team and materials were attacked by bandits, forcing a re-launch of the project — and became uncomfortable for his family, Sinclair moved in 1973 with his wife and two young daughters to Darwin, Australia, to conduct studies on Australian buffalo.

But fortune foisted another career development on the young researcher when, on Christmas Day, 1974, a fierce cyclone hit Darwin. It destroyed 95 per cent of the city and devastated Sinclair’s research project. While helping evacuate residents, he spent a night huddled in a tent where, by candlelight, he scribbled his application for a job at UBC.

While at UBC, Sinclair has continued his work in the Serengeti, studied the Yukon?s snowshoe hare and the Vancouver Island marmot, one of the most endangered mammals in the world.

He also served as director of UBC?s Biodiversity Research Centre from 1996 to 2002 and helped shape the vision for a new interdisciplinary research centre, now under the leadership of Prof. Dolph Schluter. With major funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and a recent $8 million donation from Vancouver mining entrepreneur Ross Beaty, the centre that started as a dream in 1992 is expected to open in 2007.

For further information contact:

Karen Sage Tricker PR Office 01224 646 491 Mobile 07795 522012