Bruce Beehler

Who is Bruce Beehler?

Dr. Bruce Beehler is an ornithologist and vice-president of Conservation International's Melanesia Center for Biodiversity Conservation.

Bruce Beehler graduated from Williams College and received his Masters and PhD on Birds of Paradise at Princeton University.

He has been an authority on New Guinea birds for several decades, having authored or co-authored several major works on the avifauna of this island, including Birds of Paradise, The Birds of New Guinea and the two-volume The Birds of Papua New Guinea.

To the general public, Beehler is best known for having co-lead a widely published survey on biological diversity in 2005 in the Foja Mountains, Papua, where he, together with an international team of 11 scientists, the majority from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, made several significant discoveries.

The findings on this survey expanded on previous research conducted in the region by Dr. Jared Diamond in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Beehler and colleagues, however, returned with the first ever photographs of two species of birds, the Berlepsch's Parotia and the Golden-fronted Bowerbird, that previously were known only from a few specimens. Additionally, a previously unknown species of honeyeater was discovered, it being scientifically described in 2007 as the Wattled Smoky Honeyeater. The specific epithet, carolae, commemorates Carol Beehler, the wife of Bruce Beehler. Together with a team from 60 minutes, Beehler returned to the Foja Mountains in 2007, resulting in the first ever filming of several of the species discovered in 2005, as well as encounters with an undescribed giant rat and a tiny pygmy possum.