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Rasanayagam (Rudy) Rudran, Ph.D.
Scientist Emeritus
Department of Conservation Biology
Conservation and Science

Education

University of Sri Lanka, B.Sc. Marine Ecology (1966),

University of Sri Lanka, M. Sc. Terrestrial Ecology (1970),

University of Maryland, Ph. D. Animal Ecology and Behavior (1976)

Professional History and Interest

Rudy Rudran was born in Sri Lanka and came to the U.S. as a Fulbright Scholar in 1970 to pursue his doctoral program at the University of Maryland. His M. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees included long-term field investigations of primate ecology and behavior in Sri Lanka and Uganda respectively. His post-doctoral research also dealt with primates, and was conducted in Venezuela under the sponsorship of the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park (NZP) from 1976 to 1979.

Subsequently Rudran conducted a field study in Sri Lanka to assess the impacts of a large agricultural development project on elephants and other wildlife. This study led to the establishment of four new national parks, especially for the protection of endemic and endangered species such as the elephant.

After a year in Sri Lanka, Dr. Rudran returned to NZP and used his field experience from all three tropical continents to develop the Wildlife Conservation and Management Training Program (WCMTP). An important objective of WCMTP was to promote biodiversity conservation on a global scale, through personnel training, research and environmental education.

To achieve this objective, Rudran has organized nearly 115 conservation-oriented training courses and workshops since 1981, and conducted them in more than fifteen countries. These courses and workshops have trained nearly 2000 wildlife biologists, natural resource managers, and environmental educators from 80 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America.

Additionally, Rudran has trained several course alumni as trainers and helped to perpetuate conservation training in many foreign countries. He has also assisted course alumni to attend universities for post-graduate education or conduct conservation-oriented field projects in their home countries. Moreover, Rudran has collaborated successfully with institutions in Malaysia, Brazil, and China to establish centers designed to promote biodiversity conservation through research, training, and environmental education. He is now pursuing the same initiative with institutions in Thailand and Uganda.

Rudran is particularly interested in conservation and research issues in countries belonging to his program’s global network He has conducted short-term research in 15 of these countries, and continues his primate research in Venezuela even today. Rudran has advised several countries as well as agencies like USAID and the World Bank on matters related to biodiversity conservation.

Using his training experience, Rudran has also helped to produce biodiversity conservation training manuals in English and Chinese. He is currently working with Brazilian colleagues to produce a similar manual in Portuguese. Rudran also has about 50 other scientific publications to his credit.