Patricia Wright, lemur expert, at Seneca Park Zoo
Patricia C. Wright's younger brother, Ted Chapple of Avon, mused recently that his big sister is known around the world — except in the area where she grew up.
The Rochester area will have a chance to get to know one of its favorite daughters better this weekend, when the world-renown lemur expert returns for a screening of an IMAX movie made about the animals she studies and a gala at Seneca Park Zoo.
For more than a decade, the zoo and its volunteers have supported Wright's research in Madagascar, where Wright was the driving force behind saving a section of rainforest after discovering a species of lemur there. Known widely in the scientific and conservation world, Wright's visibility took a big leap forward this year, which her proud brother describes as "The Year of Pat," with new accolades and events:
• In March, IMAX released Island of Lemurs: Madagascar, a 40-minute documentary on the monkey-like animals that are unique to that island off the east coast of Africa. Wright was scientific adviser for and featured in the film narrated by Morgan Freeman.
• In May, Wright won the $250,000 Indianapolis Prize, becoming the first woman to do so. She told HuffPost Live, "This is like the Nobel Prize of conservation."
• Also in May, Wright was named a distinguished professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, attaining the highest teaching position in the SUNY system. She teaches two courses in the spring at Stony Brook and leads research during the fall semester at Centre ValBio, a research institute she created in Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar.
In September or October, Lantern Press will publish For the Love of Lemurs: My life in the wilds of Madagascar, the second part of Wright's autobiography. Of the first book, High Moon over the Amazon: My Quest to Understand the Monkeys of the Night, primatologist Jane Goodall wrote, "This is a book you must read."
Despite the heady acclaim, one thing Wright is looking forward to Friday, when she attends a screening of the movie, is meeting up with classmates from her school days in Lyndonville, Orleans County.
"I'm quite excited to go to Rochester," Wright said recently, speaking by phone from her new house on Long Island. "My class is only 43. It's the tiniest little school. I haven't seen them for a very long time," she said.
Wright also spoke of her gratitude for the zoo — the docents actually host the fundraiser that brings in about $14,000 a year for conservation in Madagascar — for being a longtime supporter.
"The Seneca Park Zoo has been an amazing partner in this. You need someone who is going to stick with you and keep funding the things you need," she said.
It was in the Rochester area where Wright got her first funding boost that started the then-housewife on a career in rainforest conservation. The late Nancy Mulligan of Avon gave Wright a grant to study owl monkeys in the Amazon. Chapple said some of the benefactor's grandchildren will attend the screening.
A partnership with the zoo began more than 10 years ago and led to zoo veterinarian Dr. Jeff Wyatt working with Wright in Madagascar during five expeditions. Wyatt's last trip there was eight years ago, but he said he will talk with Wright this weekend about her invitation to travel there again.
In the last decade, what Wright said had been a soccer field and a rice paddy was made over into a research station containing laboratories for several kinds of science, dormitories and other facilities. Health care clinics for people living around the rainforest have grown. Natives are working not only as tour guides for the scientists, but are now starting to be trained to work in the laboratories, too.
The local town, which used to have two hotels, now has 26. And locals who used to show researchers around are now running more than 57 independent tour businesses. "Tourism has gone out of sight," she said, bringing 30,000 people to Ranomafana each year.
Meanwhile, 500 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students have come to Madagascar through Stony Brook's study abroad program and 20 Malagasy students have come to the United States.
"Students coming over (to the United States) is very important and we're trying to raise money to fund more," Wright said, citing a Malagasy graduate student who is working with Stony Brook at University of California at Davis to obtain geographic information system training to create maps of the uncharted rain forests in Madagascar.
At 68, Wright isn't yet considering retirement. "We're really interested in expanding our successful model and making more protected areas like Ranomafana," she said. She's planning on trying to work in a second area of Madagascar, once again establishing a national park and working with people who live in the area to help support it. As before, Wright says she thinks a new species of lemur — there are more than 100 types — has been discovered in that area.
Wyatt said Wright established a protocol for conservation projects — engaging local people and meeting their needs in order to help save animals in the wild. "That's a model being followed around the world." he said.
Her work also inspired Rochester's zoo to branch out locally and globally with other conservation projects, Wyatt said.
"When I was first invited to join Pat in Madagascar about 11 years ago, our zoo had very little experience with field conservation, especially international," he said. Besides the Madagascar project, the zoo now has worked with the federal government on restoration of sturgeon to the Genesee River, and is helping locals in Borneo raise goats and cattle instead of killing the rainforest, which provides habitat for orangutans.
"I think it's a new world with conservation biology and Pat's leading the effort," Wyatt said.
DLCARTER@DemocratandChronicle.com
If you go
Patricia Wright will appear at two events this weekend. Friday at 7 p.m., she'll attend the IMAX film showing, Island of Lemurs: Madagascar at Tinseltown in Gates. Wright was a scientific adviser on the movie and is featured in it. She'll also participate in a question-and-answer session following the 40-minute film.
On Saturday evening, Wright will attend Party Madagascar, an annual gala hosted by docents at the Seneca Park Zoo to raise money for conservation work in Madgascar. The public part of this 21-and-older event runs from 6:30 to 11 p.m. Tickets, which cost $10 in advance and $12 at the door are available online, at the zoo and at the event, held after hours at the zoo.