President Obama arrived in Cuba March 20th, the first visit by a U.S. leader since Calvin Coolidge in1928. Last spring I spoke to Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology researcher Eduardo Inigo-Elias about what improved relations between the U.S. and Cuba could mean for science.
[EIE:] “For the last 12 years the lab of ornithology has been involved in research and conservation and training, building local capacity with biologists and scientists from Cuba. So you can imagine the amount of work that we have on the back from our lawyers from Cornell University to get the permits to work, through the treasury department and the state department here in the U.S. But also been a lot of paperwork to do the things that we want to do collaborating with Cuban scientists. And our Cuban scientists have to deal also with their restrictions that they have…”
[SM:] “I noticed there’s a book on your desk called The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy which gives you an idea of the kind of things we’ve been talking about. Where you have to do this kind of thing where you’re not just a research scientist. You’re also a diplomat.”
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[EIE:] “You need to be—there are many challenges. Especially you learn this with migratory birds that there is a natural resource shared by everybody and there are many issues that affect. When the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico happened, everybody was calling here and ringing: “Who are the people you know in Cuba that can help us to understand if the water changed in that direction and the oil starts going to the shore what are going to be the impacts especially now that the migratory birds are moving?”…
[SM:] “So the thawing of the U.S.–Cuban relationship is a really big deal for you and your colleagues.”
[EIE:] “I think so. I think you will see that in the future there’s going to be more important strengths of what activities we do. And I know many other institutions, like the Smithsonian, have been very interested to collaborate with Cuba because it’s always one of the gaps that we have on information.”
To hear the entire interview with Eduardo Inigo-Elias, most of which is about migratory bird research, just go to the podcast page at www.scientificamerican.com and find the June 18th, 2015, edition of the Science Talk podcast.
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
