Friday, October 29, Joel Carlin’s Conservation Biology class is holding a lecture, open to the public, entitled “The Tragedies of Bush Meat” in Nobel Hall at 10:30 a.m..

Carlin, a professor for four years at Gustavus in the biology department, is the professor of the BIO-245 class, Conservation Biology. Carlin’s education background focuses on fisheries: the study of aquatic organisms, how people use them and the ecosystems involved. He is currently advising and teaching biology and environmental studies classes.

Conservation Biology focuses on many different topics, ranging from the Louisiana Purchase to evolution and how it affects our world today. Carlin likes to integrate unique case studies to stimulate discussion for the students, and break away from the routine lectures. The students aren’t tested on this material; they are just supposed to challenge themselves with the topics. “I challenge them with their consumer habits and how it affects the environment. I want them to ask themselves, ‘What can you as an individual do?’ using their knowledge of biology as well,” Carlin said.

This year at Gustavus, a campus-wide interest has been food. Such events include the recent Nobel Conference “Making Food Good,” the Service Award that was presented to the Dahlke brothers for their service-focused farm and the rise of the Big Hill Farm. Carlin’s class decided to continue the trend and is presenting several lectures on food. The upcoming lecture is “The Tragedies of Bush Meat,” but others in the past have focused on caviar, vanilla and coffee and their ecological and political consequences around the world. The lecture is meant to challenge the students’ behavior, but Carlin said, “This won’t be a lecture where we are preaching from a ‘more liberal than thou’ pulpit.”

The upcoming lecture is focusing on animals in tropical forests and how they are killed to feed laborers in these areas. Harvesting anything from tropical forests is very labor intensive, and often these areas don’t have well-managed roads. The workers need to find ways to feed themselves, and they resort to hunting the native species. Often these workers have high-powered ammunition with them and target animals such as elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, antelopes and rhinos.

“This is a tragedy because everyone has heard of illegal poaching, hunting for sport and trade, but not of shooting a gorilla to eat for that day’s meal,” Carlin said.

Many factors are contributing to this behavior. In these countries, a social acceptance drives the killing. The people sometimes don’t know enough about how their actions affect the surrounding ecology. By killing one animal, they are hurting other species that depend upon them, causing a “kill one, kill another” cycle. The laborers are sacrificing the long-term good for short-term cash they gain from their labor.

Justine Koch, a senior biology and environmental science major, said, “Attending one of these lectures is a valuable experience not only for students interested in biology and the environment, but for students of all interests. The field of conservation biology is truly interdisciplinary and can provide insights on the utility of a liberal arts education. If you are not interested in a lecture’s educational value, come solely for the entertainment of listening to [Carlin] lecture.”

“The Tragedies of Bush Meat” the fourth lecture in the Lectures on Food and the Environment series, is going to be held on Friday, Oct.29 at 10:30 a.m. in room 121 of Nobel Hall.