Mark Plotkin
Encyclopedia
Ethnobotany
Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the relationships that exist between people and plants....
and a plant explorer in the Neotropics, where he is an expert on rainforest ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s. Plotkin is an advocate for tropical rainforest conservation
Tropical rainforest conservation
-Conservation:Right now, people are conserving the Tropical Rain Forests by ecotourism and rehabilitation. Ecotourism is giving people tours of the forest and showing them what we are losing by cutting them down...
.
Background and career
After attending Isidore Newman SchoolIsidore Newman School
Isidore Newman School is a private, nondenominational, co-educational college preparatory school located on an campus in the Uptown section of New Orleans, Louisiana.-History:...
in New Orleans, Plotkin was a college dropout working at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's Museum of Comparative Zoology when he joined an expedition searching for an elusive crocodilian species in 1978 and was galvanized into returning to education. He completed his bachelor's degree at the Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, his master's degree in forestry at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
and his Ph.D. at Tufts University
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
, during which he completed a handbook for the Tirio people of Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
detailing their own medicinal plants—the only other book printed in Tirio language being the Bible. He went on to do research at Harvard under Richard Evans Schultes
Richard Evans Schultes
Richard Evans Schultes may be considered the father of modern ethnobotany, for his studies of indigenous peoples' uses of plants, including especially entheogenic or hallucinogenic plants , for his lifelong collaborations with chemists, and...
. He is the author of the book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. Other critically acclaimed books by Plotkin include Medicine Quest, The Killers Within - The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria (with Michael Shnayerson), and The Shaman's Apprentice, (a children's book with Lynne Cherry).
In 1995, Plotkin and prominent Costa Rican conservationist Liliana Madrigal formed the Amazon Conservation Team
Amazon Conservation Team
The Amazon Conservation Team is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with indigenous people of tropical America in conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon Rainforest as well as the culture and land of its indigenous people....
to protect Amazonian rainforest in partnership with local indigenous peoples. ACT has now worked with 32 tribes throughout Amazonia. Plotkin continues to work with the Tirio of Suriname, and in Brazil as well. He is featured in the 1997 IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
film Amazon
Amazon (1997 film)
Amazon is a 1997 short documentary film directed by Kieth Merrill. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.The film features ethnobiologist Mark Plotkin, who discusses the role of rainforest conservation and the benefits of investigating it further in the interest of...
.
Plotkin received the San Diego Zoo Gold Medal for Conservation (1993) and the Roy Chapman Andrews Distinguished Explorer Award (2004). Time magazine called him an "Environmental Hero for the Planet" (2001) and Smithsonian magazine hailed him as one of "35 Who Made a Difference" (2005), along with other notables like Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
, Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, and fellow New Orleanian Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...
.
In March 2008, Plotkin and Madrigal were among those chosen as "Social Entrepreneurs of the Year" by the Skoll Foundation.
In May 2010, Mark Plotkin received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. The degree citation read in part: "For teaching us that the loss of knowledge and species anywhere impoverishes us all; for combining humanitarian vision with academic rigor and moral sensibility; and for reminding us always, with clarity and passion and humor, that when we study people and plants, we are simultaneously exploring paths to philosophy, music, art, dance reverence, and healing; Lewis and Clark is honored to confer on you today the Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa." In October of the same year, the great primatologist Jane Goodall presented Mark with an award for "International Conservation Leadership."
Books
Books written by Mark J. Plotkin include: Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice and Medicine Quest.Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice
Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice is the account of Plotkin's work in the Amazon rainforest tracking shamans' knowledge of curative powers of plants. The book details the potential value of these plants as well as the incredible wisdom of indigenous healers as to how these species can best be used.The book served as the basis for the award-winning documentary The Shaman's Apprentice, directed by Miranda Smith.
Medicine Quest
In Medicine Quest, Plotkin continues to address topics discussed in his previous book, exploring searches for new medicine from nature around the world. The book, writes Plotkin, "is a quest powered by the desperation of the ill and the compassion of those who would cure them."In this book, Plotkin highlights the ironic marriage of natural products, indigenous wisdom, and biotechnology and details discoveries already producing leads in the laboratory: painkillers from the skin of rain forest frogs, anticoagulants from leech saliva, and antitumor agents from snake venom. Medicine Quest provides also background on the centuries-old pursuit of cures that ranges from the ancient Egyptians expeditions to foreign lands in search of healing plants, to the nineteenth-century development of aspirin; from willow bark, to the extraction of penicillin from fungi.
External links
- Mark Plotkin interview: Indigenous people are key to rainforest conservation efforts