Godman Salvin Prize for 'Bird-Professor' Theunis Piersma
At the international Wader Study Group’s 50th Anniversary conference Professor Theunis Piersma has been presented with the BOU Godman Salvin Prize. This is the most prestigious award by the British Ornithologists’ Union and recognises Piersma's outstanding contribution to ornithology & research on shorebirds and waders.

Theunis Piersma is Professor of Global Flyway Ecology (a WWF chair) at the University of Groningen. Together with his international research team, he studies how the distribution and numbers of waders correlate to climate, food, predators, pathogens and their historical-genetic background. Research is being conducted within the Netherlands as well as in comparable ecosystems in Africa, Australia, North and South America and Asia. Piersma also works as a Wadden biologist for the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) on the island of Texel. Piersma is one of the greatest advocates of conservation of the Wadden Sea. For the past three years he has concentrated, inter alia, on population studies among black-tailed godwits. He is, for example, involved in a study that tracks godwits in their breeding grounds in Friesland and during their migration to and from southern Europe and Africa via a transmitter in their abdominal cavity.
Theunis Piersma's contribution to ornithology goes far beyond his 500 plus peer‐reviewed scientific papers and 14 books, generally focused on migratory birds, to his role in their conservation including via innovative use of the arts as well as influencing policies and management prescriptions. The strength of influence in the scientific and conservation worlds of ‘waderologists’ is in no small part due to the infectious enthusiasm and energy of the ever‐questioning Professor Piersma. The strength and breadth of Piersma's work within ornithology makes him an outstandingly deserving recipient of the BOU Godman Salvin Prize, and for it to be awarded during his beloved International Wader Study Group’s 50th anniversary conference is a fitting and fine tribute to an exceptional ornithologist.
For more information about the Godman Salvin Prize see the press release on BOU's website.
Last modified: | 21 October 2020 09.57 a.m. |
More news
-
25 April 2025
Leading microbiologist Arnold Driessen honoured
On 25 April 2025, Arnold Driessen (Horst, the Netherlands, 1958) received a Royal Decoration. Driessen is Professor of Molecular Microbiology and chair of the Molecular Microbiology research department of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the...
-
24 April 2025
Highlighted papers April 2025
The antimalarial drug mefloquine could help treat genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as well as some cancers.
-
22 April 2025
Microplastics and their effects on the human body
Professor of Respiratory Immunology Barbro Melgert has discovered how microplastics affect the lungs and can explain how to reduce our exposure.