Our tribute to Georgina Mace

The members of the PDTF are deeply saddened by the passing of eminent conservationist Professor Dame Georgina Mace, and we wanted to pay our respects to her extraordinary leadership and contributions to conserving the tree of life.

She spent 23 years at Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the last six years as the Director of Science where she assembled a team of talented and passionate scientists, some of whom conceptualised the EDGE metric and subsequently established the pioneering EDGE of Existence programme in 2007. Well known globally for her work to rigorously define the criteria for Red List assessments, she also guided the Institute of Zoology team who used these alongside phylogenetic diversity metrics to present a new approach to conservation prioritisation. And, in April 2017, she joined several of us at ZSL’s EDGE workshop to discuss and evolve the EDGE metric to incorporate advances in knowledge around extinction risk and phylogenies. With us at the EDGE of Existence’s ten-year anniversary talk and dinner in October 2017, Georgina was inspirational, warm and encouraging in supporting our work.

Georgina meeting the giant tortoises at ZSL London Zoo, during a break in the EDGE workshop. 

More broadly, her leadership and work contributed to the conservation of biodiversity as a whole from species to ecosystems: from the IUCN Red List criteria, to her work with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, IPBES, and her most recent paper on how we really can seek to bend the curve on biodiversity loss. We recognise how fundamental her work has been to everything we now do as conservation scientists.

We remember not only her contributions and achievements, but also her warmth and generosity. We send our deepest sympathies to her family, friends and colleagues.