Jackson Hu
I am interested in what nature means to a society, especially a so-call "green" society holding ecological sustainability and social justice. Usually our understanding on nature in this modern era is from science. From my childhood, I love to learn everything about general science. In my high-school years, I had my first-time personal experience of scientific projects by developing a "Special Crystal Cells in Magnetic Field" experiment with the advice of my high school teacher. By presenting my results and analysis, I was awarded the First prize in 1989 in the National Science Exhibition competition of Taiwan and third prize in 1988. In college, I started to explore my scientific interests as a biologist. I was admitted to the Department of Biological Science at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, as a gifted student in 1991. In the early years of my college period, I had a strong interest in laboratory investigation. I was also awarded a 2-year educational project by the National Council of Science in Taiwan and participated in a botanical research at the Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. My personal project focused on the application of in-situ hybridization for rice protein.
In my senior year of college, I was actively involved in a wide range of wildlife field projects, such as Formosan Sika Deer (Cevvus nippon taiouanus ) Recovery Project in Taiwan. I was a research assistant for the study of foraging ecology and habitat selection of this extirpated deer. Based on my 1.5-year field data, I published two papers in the Biological Bulletin of National Taiwan Normal University about "Seasonal Changes of Foraging Behavior of the Sika Deer" and "Food Habits of Sika Deer". I also presented the results in national and international conferences, such as the spoken paper "Seasonal Foraging Strategies and its Conservation Implication of Sika Deer" in the 2nd Animal Behavior Conference of Taiwan, and a poster paper about "Application of the Jogging Meter to Recovered Sika Deer" in the 3rd International Deer Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. However, I found my interests evolved from a focus on animal behavior and ecology toward a greater emphasis on conservation issues.
After I graduated from the university, I worked as a biology teacher in a high school in an agricultural county in Taiwan, but I was still involved in a number of conservation researches. For example, I was the research assistant for the study on foraging ecology and population dynamics of the endangered Black-Faced Spoonbill (Threskiornithidae minor ). In 1996, I participated in a research project of Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas ) in Lanyu Island, Taiwan. I was also a special executive for coordinating a 3-month ecotourism workshop at Iratai, and conducted an educational program for the Yami Tribal Center at Iraralai, Lanyu. Working on conservation-development dilemma, I realized environmental issues always confronted conflicts of societal action between human welfare and ecological integrity. I decided to go abroad to enrich my conservation perspectives with insights from other different disciplines. Fortunately, I was accepted as a graduate student in the Conservation Biology Program at the University of Minnesota (US) in 1998.
My graduate work started from a MS project about integrated geographical analysis that estimated the potential habitat of Formosan Sika Deer in Taiwan. I took a wide variety of classes and seminars in ecology, environmental science, anthropology, and sociology to shape my proposed dissertation work in the future. I decide my research core will focus on human-dominated landscapes, especially agroecosystems which contain vast biodiversity that maintain human sociocultural activities. Such an agroecosystem, including forests, fallow, farmland and villages embedded in landscape matrix as a whole, provides an excellent opportunity to understand how societies impact on biodiversity and living resources, as well as how biodiversity is managed or lost through the knowledge of local resource management system. Human survival and welfare ultimately depend on the integrated development of natural resources in which human land uses and livelihoods are compatible with the maintenance of biological diversity, ecological services, evolutionary processes, and ecosystem functions.
In my senior year of college, I was actively involved in a wide range of wildlife field projects, such as Formosan Sika Deer (Cevvus nippon taiouanus ) Recovery Project in Taiwan. I was a research assistant for the study of foraging ecology and habitat selection of this extirpated deer. Based on my 1.5-year field data, I published two papers in the Biological Bulletin of National Taiwan Normal University about "Seasonal Changes of Foraging Behavior of the Sika Deer" and "Food Habits of Sika Deer". I also presented the results in national and international conferences, such as the spoken paper "Seasonal Foraging Strategies and its Conservation Implication of Sika Deer" in the 2nd Animal Behavior Conference of Taiwan, and a poster paper about "Application of the Jogging Meter to Recovered Sika Deer" in the 3rd International Deer Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. However, I found my interests evolved from a focus on animal behavior and ecology toward a greater emphasis on conservation issues.
After I graduated from the university, I worked as a biology teacher in a high school in an agricultural county in Taiwan, but I was still involved in a number of conservation researches. For example, I was the research assistant for the study on foraging ecology and population dynamics of the endangered Black-Faced Spoonbill (Threskiornithidae minor ). In 1996, I participated in a research project of Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas ) in Lanyu Island, Taiwan. I was also a special executive for coordinating a 3-month ecotourism workshop at Iratai, and conducted an educational program for the Yami Tribal Center at Iraralai, Lanyu. Working on conservation-development dilemma, I realized environmental issues always confronted conflicts of societal action between human welfare and ecological integrity. I decided to go abroad to enrich my conservation perspectives with insights from other different disciplines. Fortunately, I was accepted as a graduate student in the Conservation Biology Program at the University of Minnesota (US) in 1998.
My graduate work started from a MS project about integrated geographical analysis that estimated the potential habitat of Formosan Sika Deer in Taiwan. I took a wide variety of classes and seminars in ecology, environmental science, anthropology, and sociology to shape my proposed dissertation work in the future. I decide my research core will focus on human-dominated landscapes, especially agroecosystems which contain vast biodiversity that maintain human sociocultural activities. Such an agroecosystem, including forests, fallow, farmland and villages embedded in landscape matrix as a whole, provides an excellent opportunity to understand how societies impact on biodiversity and living resources, as well as how biodiversity is managed or lost through the knowledge of local resource management system. Human survival and welfare ultimately depend on the integrated development of natural resources in which human land uses and livelihoods are compatible with the maintenance of biological diversity, ecological services, evolutionary processes, and ecosystem functions.
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