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October 14, 2008
Alcoa Foundation Fellow
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Employees at Alcoa Intalco Works (Ferndale, WA) recently had the opportunity to learn first hand about the work of Alcoa Foundation Conservation and Sustainability Fellow Josh Donlan MA PhD. With the assistance of the Alcoa Foundation fellowship, Josh is working on a project that explores the potential to use biodiversity offsets as a way to address the issue of bycatch - seabirds and sea turtles unintentionally caught during fishing operations- which is a major factor contributing to significant declines in many endangered marine species.
Josh shared the details of his project which aims to demonstrate how biodiversity offsets can play an important role in addressing this issue when benchmark fishing practices are all ready in place. He focused on a particular case study which demonstrated that by investing in an offset - the removal of invasive mammals from a seabird breeding island - rather than closing the fisheries directly, resulted in greater conservation gains for endangered seabirds and was 35% more cost-effective.
Following the presentation, Josh toured the aluminum smelter which currently produces around 200,000 metric tonnes of aluminum per annum, as well as the facility's dock and rehabilitated landfill areas.
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