Pamela Matson on Conservation as a Living Discipline

If World Wildlife Fund’s approach to conservation could be embodied in a single person, it just might be Pamela Matson. Matson—an ecosystem ecologist, dean of Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences, and MacArthur Fellow— articulates a progression in her professional life that bears striking similarities to the evolution of WWF’s conservation philosophy.

A Wisconsin native, Matson grew up looking forward to summers spent visiting national parks. “Every summer, we’d head across the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana, and go to Yellowstone, Glacier National Park or the Grand Tetons,” she says. “Some might find those long drives boring, but I remember just loving it, looking out across the grasslands and being fascinated by what I saw.”

That childhood love of open spaces segued into a heightened awareness of the nascent environmental movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, laying the foundation for Matson’s career pursuits.

"Environmental concerns had become quite noticeable, and I think that’s what got me going in my career—that I cared about how humans affect and are affected by our environment,” she says.

That switch in focus was echoed at WWF. From a relatively singular focus on protecting species, WWF’s lens expanded to include the ecosystems and habitats needed to support those species, and then to a realization that, as Matson says, “If we don’t work out the people part of it, it’s not going to work out at all.”  This progression is emblematic of one of conservation’s greatest truths: it is a living discipline.

Matson refers to the sustainability science she and WWF practice as “use-inspired research,” an approach that includes not only research that leads to discoveries about how the world works, but that also provides information essential to helping decision makers make good decisions.

“That’s one of the reasons it’s so important for WWF to have scientists on staff, helping to connect the organization with the broader scientific community and to motivate use-inspired research, and also to take the best research that’s being done and bring it in to use,” Matson says.

And can we expect any more career evolutions from Dr. Matson? “Well, you never know,” she says, laughing. “The world is changing rapidly, so we’d better be able to change, too.”