Dr Stuart Butchart is Chief Scientist at BirdLife International, a global partnership of national nature conservation organisations in 119 countries worldwide. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He has published extensively in the field of conservation science.
He led development of the Red List Index, an indicator of biodiversity loss now used by the United Nations and governments worldwide to track progress towards global goals on biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. He has also developed innovations in methods for assessing extinction rates and research on protected areas, climate change impacts on biodiversity, unsustainable exploitation of species, and invasive alien species. He has made major contributions to our understanding of the state of nature globally, the financial costs and impact of conservation, and progress in meeting targets to tackle biodiversity loss.
He has been awarded the Zoological Society of London’s Marsh Award for Conservation Biology and the British Trust for Ornithology’s Marsh Award for Ornithology. He was a Coordinating Lead Author of the first Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Professional position
- Chief Scientist, BirdLife International
