| Lecturers | Jerome Petit JÈrÙme holds a BSc. in Agronomy, a MSc. in Environmental Sciences from the engineering school ISARA in Lyon, France, and a MSc. in Political Sciences from UniversitÈ Montesquieu in Bordeaux. JerÙme has held a number of research positions in agriculture, environment and political sciences, applied to biodiversity and climate change. He worked on organic farming in Boulder, Colorado (USA), on soil ecology at IRD in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), on bovine reproduction at UNCEIA in Paris (France), on forest pests at INRA in Bordeaux (France), and on increasing deforestation awareness in Lamjung (Nepal). At CSIRO Darwin (Australia) in 2003, he wrote his Master's thesis in Environmental Science on the use of ants as a biological indicator to monitor the impact of grazing on biodiversity in Northern Australia rangelands. Following the completion of his Master's in Political Sciences, he worked at the European Parliament in Brussels (Belgium) where he participated in the development of a strategy for the conservation of biodiversity in European forests. In 2005, he joined the Gump station in Moorea (French Polynesia) to participate in a biocontrol program targeting the Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter (Homalodisca vitripennis). He was responsible for the monitoring of pest density and control agent efficiency on more than 20 French Polynesian islands. He also completed an inventory of native cicadellids, and was leading the outreach aspect of the project. In 2007, JÈrÙme joined the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) in Brussels where he participated in the organization of a high-level international conference on climate change and biodiversity in European overseas entities, an official event of the French Presidency of the European Union held on RÈunion island (www. reunion2008.eu). He was the lead author of the background paper for this conference, a state-of-the-art 180-page book on the impact of climate change on island biodiversity, involving more than 120 contributors. In September 2008 JÈrÙme headed back to the Gump Station in Moorea. He is now the Coordinator and Communications Officer of the Moorea Biocode Project and the scientific advisor of the Baseline Study on Climate Change in French Polynesia. |
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