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Lemur scientist first woman to win Indianapolis Prize

Shari Rudavsky
The Indianapolis Star
Lemur expert Patricia Wright is the 2014 winner of the Indianapolis Prize. Wright, a Stony Brook University professor, is credited with helping to save the lemurs of Madagascar.

The lemurs of the Madagascar rainforest may owe their existence to Jimi Hendrix.

More than three decades ago Patricia C. Wright, a Brooklyn social worker, was on her way to a Hendrix concert when she popped into an exotic pet shop. She peered into the cage of an owl monkey. He reached out and held her finger.

"I looked into his eyes, and I realized there was a connection there," Wright said.

That connection led to a radical life change. Eventually Wright headed to graduate school and then to Madagascar to do research. She has discovered new lemur species and helped create a national park — all while helping the local people along the way.

Her efforts have blossomed into a worldwide movement to save the lemurs, considered to be among the most endangered vertebrates.

And on Tuesday, Wright, an anthropology professor at Stony Brook University, becomes the first woman to win the prestigious Indianapolis Prize, an award the Indianapolis Zoo gives every two years to a conservation scientist for contributions to saving animal species.

Chosen from six finalists, Wright will receive a $250,000 purse to spend as she wishes.

Each of the six finalists could easily have won the prize, said Paul Grayson, the zoo's deputy director and senior vice president of conservation and science.

But even among this austere group, Wright, also a 2012 finalist, stood out.

"Everyone marvels at what she's accomplished in a very difficult environment, the kinds of obstacles that she has worked under," Grayson said. "What particularly distinguishes Patricia is not only her accomplishments in the field, but her body of published scientific articles, is also quite impressive."

One of her students, Mireya Mayor, has twice nominated her for the prize. Mayor, who first met Wright in 1997, said Wright wows everyone she meets.

"Pat is able to achieve the impossible," said Mayor, director of the missions program at the Centre ValBio, a program Wright founded to promote research and conservation in Madagascar.

In the 1960s, it would have seemed improbable if not impossible that Wright would embark on a career as a primatologist.

But she bought that pet shop monkey — Herbie — for $40.

Watching Herbie piqued Wright's interest in monkeys. On her own, she went to the Amazon rainforest to find Herbie a mate.

"It was the first time I had seen the rainforest, and I fell in love," she said.

Without any formal training, Wright published a paper in a scientific journal but realized she needed an advanced degree and went to grad school.

Her daughter Amanda Poston, now 41, first accompanied Wright to the rainforest when she was 3. Four years later, Wright — by this time divorced — took Poston to the Amazon for six months. The park where she worked required them to make a three-day journey from the nearest town, first in the back of a truck then in a little boat, Poston recalled.

"It was a little unconventional," Poston said. "We relied on each other a lot."

After graduating with a Ph.D. from the City University of New York in 1985, Wright took a post-doctoral position at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, N.C. There, her adviser recommended she go to Madagascar and try to find the greater bamboo lemur, a species thought to be extinct.

About 90 percent of the natural habitat of the island had been destroyed. The people who lived there were quite poor.

Lemurs were not national treasures but a sometime source of meat and a potential pest. The people on the island off the coast of Africa viewed these primates much the way we look at squirrels.

Weight's first major discovery was not the lemur species she went to find but another one, never before identified, the golden bamboo lemur. The first time she spotted one of these orange primates in the wild, it looked at her and twirled its tail around like a windmill.

"That was not a good sign. It didn't like me," she said. "It was surprised. I was surprised."

What the lemur did not realize was that Wright was to be its savior. Timber loggers threatened to destroy the lemurs' habitat and render them extinct. Wright approached the local government to intervene. Find funding, they told her.

By this point, she had found the greater bamboo lemur.

That encounter left no doubt in her mind about the importance of preserving these and other lemur species.

"It was like watching a resurrection to suddenly see an animal we thought was lost," she said.

In 1991, her efforts lead to the creation of Ranomafana National Park, which was recently featured in the IMAX movie "Island of Lemurs: Madagascar."

The social worker in her realized that to make her plan sustainable, she would need to engage the people of Madagascar. Eventually she created the Centre ValBio project, which in addition to protecting the lemurs, provides benefits in the form of jobs and improved health care.

To Wright it made sense but others in the field of conservation see it as pure genius.

Her impact on the island is everywhere, say her colleagues and friends. The national park has spawned an eco-tourism industry that has led to hotels and restaurants, which in turn have led to jobs and improved the standard of living.

From one little cabin in the rainforest surrounded by tents, Centre ValBio has turned into a $3 million state-of-the-art research facility, which includes bio-safety labs to study infectious disease.

While another person might not have taken on the task, it's critical that Wright did so, say those in the field of conservation.

"There are a handful of places around the world where species are going extinct faster than anywhere else. If we're going to stop this extinction we have to do it in key places and one of those places is Madagascar," said Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke chair of conservation at Duke University.

Wright said she will allocate much of her winnings back into the island. She'll fund a fellowship to help budding scientists from Madagascar, purchase land in the north of Madagascar where gold has been found. In addition, she'll bring electricity to villages around the park.

In her late 60s, Wright continues to make the arduous journey back and forth to Madagascar and New York several times a year.

Now there are two grandchildren, ages 7 and 11, on Cape Cod that she makes time for. In December, she and Poston traveled with them to Madagascar for the first time.

Poston, who works to prevent rainforest deforestation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the rainforest represents a special place for both her and her mother.

"That's where we get along best because we're both at peace there," she said. "It's really where she's happiest."

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