Dr. Dee Boersma

ORCID: 0000-0002-8644-6059

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Dr. Boersma is the Director of the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels at the University of Washington in the Department of Biology and holds the Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science. Fieldwork has always been her passion, and her work spans 5 decades. In the 1970’s she started working with Galápagos penguins to determine how many there were, and now is trying to expand their population by providing high quality nests. Fork-tailed storm-petrels in Alaska kept her busy for a decade, and her Magellanic penguins studies in Argentina continued for over 40 years. She enjoys the penguin colony because it is noisy, bustling with activity, is over 100 miles from the nearest city, and often internet free. Dr. Boersma’s studies helped move tanker lanes farther offshore to decrease the number of penguins swimming through petroleum and informed legislation for Marine Protected areas in the Province of Chubut, Argentina. In 2020 she endowed the Boersma Chair in Natural History and Conservation in the Center for Ecosystem Sentinel to ensure a place for long-term conservation studies at the university.

Dr. Boersma has received the Elliot Coues Award, the Heinz Award for the Environment, the Pacific Seabird Group Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a finalist for the Indianapolis Prize three times. In February 2024, she was awarded the Godman-Salvin Prize as a signal honor for her distinguished ornithological work.