Mario Alberto Ramos Olmos died suddenly and unexpectedly at his home in Washington, D.C., in the early morning of 11 September 2006, of heart failure. His passing was a staggering loss to the ornithological and conservation community to which he had devoted his immense skill, energy, and intelligence for more than three decades. Despite his extraordinary accomplishments, there is a sense that he had much left to give, especially for his beloved Mexico.
Mario was born on 24 February 1949 in Colonia Puebla of Mexico City. During his teen years, his family ran a pharmacy, working hard to become and remain members of Mexico’s fragile middle class. As the third of nine children, and the oldest male to reach adulthood, he was expected to devote considerable effort to caring for his younger brothers and sisters, and to help with the pharmacy. Nevertheless, his parents also expected him to demonstrate sufficient diligence at his studies to qualify for a profession. He showed early promise in the sciences, and entered the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 1968, graduating with a degree in biology in 1974. The ornithologist Allan Phillips, then a faculty member in the Instituto de Biología at UNAM, was Mario’s major advisor for his baccalaureate thesis, a study of the birds of the “Pedregal,” vast lava flows south of Mexico City (1974, UNAM).
In October 1972, Dwain Warner, then at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History, received a grant from the Welder Wildlife Foundation of Sinton, Texas, to support work on the nonbreeding ecology of migratory birds. The grant included the stipula- tion that the funds be used to support at least one Mexican student. Warner contacted Phillips and asked him for the best student in ornithology in Mexico. Without hesitation, Phillips recommended Mario Ramos.
My wife, Bonnie, and I first met Mario in July of 1973 at the University of Minnesota’s Itasca summer field-biology session. By August of that year, Mario was already working at UNAM’s Estación de Biología in the Tuxtla Mountains of southern Veracruz, and living at the nearby cabañas of Playa Escondida. Over most of the next 22 months (until May 1975) Mario, Dick Oehlenschlager, and I gathered data pertinent to our theses. During that two-year period, we accumulated 96,000 net-hours in tropical rain- forest and second growth and captured about 30,000 individuals of more than 150 species. This work forms, by far, the most significant contribution to the long-running investigation of the birds of the Tuxtlas, a study that began with the work of P. L. Sclater in 1857 and has included contributions from more than 60 other investigators. A total of 405 species of birds has been recorded for the Tuxtlas, 350 of which are documented by specimens. In addition, more than 90 peer-reviewed papers on Tuxtla birds have been produced, on their ecology, natural history, population dynamics, taxonomy, conservation, and the role of migrants in the movement of viruses. Mario participated as senior investigator, collaborator, or supervisor in a significant amount of this work during his 16 years (1973–1988) as a field biologist before shifting his career into international conservation.
During his graduate research in the Tuxtlas, in 1975, Mario met and married Maria Isabel Castillo, herself a biologist and UNAM graduate. Their three children, Aurora, Mariano, and Ameyali, survive. Mario’s Ph.D. dissertation (1983, University of Minnesota) focused on a question, framed by Finn Salomonsen and David Lack, regarding the degree to which birds from a particular part of a species’ Holarctic breeding range winter in a specific portion of the tropical wintering range. At that time, the only way to address the question was through band returns or, for those species in which they occurred, regional variations in plumage coloration. Using specimens of 11 species showing identifiable subspecific variation collected in the Tuxtlas, along with hundreds of other specimens from major museums, Mario obtained remarkable insight into the timing, routes, and winter settlement patterns of populations from known breeding regions. This work was quickly recognized by the scientific community as seminal. In 1979, before completing his dissertation, he was offered a position at a new Mexican government research organization, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticos (INIREB). Based in Xalapa, INIREB was created by the plant ecologist Arturo Gomez Pompa and modeled after research institutions like the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. Scientists at INIREB had remarkable freedom to pursue basic research questions with academic and government support, a freedom that Mario exercised to considerable effect. He initiated projects in the Tuxtlas as well as several other regions of the country. His greatest contribution during this period was in training a number of students, several of whom became leaders in ornithology and conservation. Mario was offered the directorship of INIREB in 1988, but declined and chose to become senior program officer for Latin America and the Caribbean for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). He left WWF in 1991 to join the Environmental Department of the World Bank, where he was responsible for assessing environmental effects of bank aid projects. In 1994, he moved to the Bank’s Global Environment Facility (GEF) as senior environmental specialist, a position he held until his untimely death in September 2006. During this latter period, he used his considerable international influence to initiate several major conservation programs in Mexico, including establishment of a portion of the Tuxtla Mountains as a Biosphere Reserve with a permanent, broad-based management team.
The quality of Mario’s research was recognized in international scientific and conservation circles. He was elected president of the Mexican section of the International Council for Bird Preservation, and he founded the Mexican conservation organization, Pronatura, in 1980. In 1982, he joined the Committee of the International Ornithological Congress, and he founded the Neotropical Ornithological Society two years later. He was an Elective Member (1985) and Fellow (1992) of the AOU. He was an invited plenary speaker at the 19th International Ornithological Congress, Ottawa, Canada (1986), and became Senior Conservation Fellow for WWF in 1988. Mario maintained his professional interest in ornithology until his death, serving as President of the Neotropical Ornithological Society from 1984 to 1998.
Mario had an uncanny facility for sifting through vast amounts of information, identifying the key issue, and charting a practical course of action. However, the clearest evidence of his extraordinary gifts was most readily observed in a public forum—any meeting where important issues were at stake. He could argue cogently and forcefully in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, and rarely failed to make his point and achieve his goals. These abilities, along with his deep commitment to conservation, enhanced Mario’s stature and nurtured his influence through his 15 years at the World Bank and GEF. Nevertheless, on the basis of his publications, students trained, organizations fathered, and wildlife preserves created, he will be best remembered, I believe, as being among Mexico’s greatest ornithologists and conserva- tionists. This exalted status in the pantheon of Mexico’s finest seems somewhat odd to those of us who knew him as a comrade, sharing soggy tacos gringos (tortillas and peanut butter) in the cold, neverending rain of a Santa Martha cloud- forest. Although his strength, energy, focus, and patience at times appeared superhuman in this particular environment, we did not think or worry much about his international standing. We knew him then mainly as we remember him today, as a dear friend, loyal, dependable, and thoroughly enjoyable to be with regardless of the circumstances; and now as one who has left us—way too soon.
I thank J. Vega Rivera, K. Winker, and I. Castillo de Ramos, who provided critical information for this memorial.
