Disney Science in Comics: Genetics and Evolution

Dr. Silvia Bencivelli

Piero Genovesi, has a PhD in animal ecology, since May 2014 he is head of the Wildlife Advisory Service of the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research – ISPRA, and since 2017 he is Head of the Area for Wildlife Management and Conservation ISPRA. Piero Genovesi is chair of the IUCN SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group (www.issg.org), is Research Associate with the Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, and International Science Advisor for the Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

Piero Genovesi has worked in several areas of conservation biology, including the ecology and conservation of carnivores, the translocation of wildlife, monitoring of biodiversity, and invasive species. For what concerns carnivores’ ecology, he supervised the reintroduction of the brown bears to the Italian Alps, and was responsible for coordinating the publication of national action plans for the conservation of the wolf, the brown bear and the otter, commissioned by the Italian Ministry of Environment. Active member of the International Association for Bear Research and Management. he served as Vice President of the Association for many years. In terms of translocations, Piero Genovesi was responsible for coordinating the establishment of national guidelines on animal translocations in 1996; the guidelines for the translocation of species of community interest in 2007; and, served on the SSC task force that produced the IUCN Guidelines on Reintroductions and other Conservation Translocations, adopted by IUCN in 2012. From 2011 to 2014 he led the establishment of the national 3rd Report under art. 17 of the Habitat Directive, coordinating a group of 73 authors, and more than 100 experts. Piero Genovesi is particularly active in IUCN, since 2013 resides on the Steering Committee of the Species Survival Commission, and has served on the Red List Committee.
Main area of activity is on invasive species and related policy-making, he co-authored the European Strategy on Invasive Alien Species, adopted by the Council of Europe in 2003, and since then he has published several papers on the patterns of invasions and the responses to this threat, including articles and commentaries for high rank journals such as Science, Nature, PNAS, PLoS, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environments, Conservation Biology, Trends in Ecology and Evolution and Global Change Biology. On the topic of invasive species, Piero Genovesi has close collaborations with main international institutions, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the European Union, the Bern Convention, the European Environment Agency, and the Convention on Migratory Species. He is a member of the Liaison Group on Invasive Alien Species of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which involves the main international standard setting organisations (International Plant Protection Convention, World Trade Organisation, World Organisation for Animal Health). More recently he is a founding member of the Steering Committee of the Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership (GIASIP), launched by the Convention on Biological Diversity.