People

Milliken, William

Job Title	Head of Tropical America Regional Team
Department	Herbarium
Section	Regional Teams
Science Teams	Drylands: Tropical America
Joined Kew	2004
Foreign Language(s)	Portuguese (fluent), Spanish (working), French (working).

Qualifications & Appointments

MA, Natural Sciences, Univ. Cambridge, 1985

PhD, Univ. Cambridge, 1999.

 

Role

Applied, conservation-focused research into composition and management of natural habitats and sustainable use of plant resources; project/team development and management.

Responsibilities include management of the work of the Tropical America Regional Team: curation and naming, project development, research grant management and teaching. Research activities include floristic analysis and mapping of tropical and temperate vegetation units, employing quantitative and qualitative survey techniques and geographic information systems, identification of indicators and development/delivery of recommendations and project designs for management planning and conservation. Other research has focused on documentation and evaluation of use and management of vegetation by indigenous societies and other rural communities, with a particular emphasis on threatened plant resources, medicinal plants and sustainable income generation, and development of methodologies for participatory surveys of human/environmental interaction and production of innovative, accessible resources for information-sharing, capacity-building and dissemination of research outputs.

Projects

Habitat Restoration and Sustainable Use of Southern Peruvian Dry Forest

Interactive Key to Neotropical Flowering Plant Families

Kew Latin America Research Fellowships

Plant Diversity and Conservation in Bolivia

Vegetation Management for Conservation in Brazil

Selected Recent Publications

Sasaki, D., Zappi, D. & Milliken, W. (2009). Vegetação do Parque Estadual Cristalino. Relatório Final.  Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Milliken, W. (2006). Conservation, Economics, Traditional Knowledge and the Yanomami: Implications and benefits for whom? pp 238-247 in: Posey, D.A. & Balick, M.J. (eds), Human Impacts on Amazonia. Colombia University Press, New York.

Milliken, W. & Bridgewater, S. (2004). Flora Celtica: Plants and people in Scotland. Birlinn, Edinburgh.

 

Selected Earlier Publications

Milliken, W., Albert, B. & Goodwin Gomez, G. (1999). Yanomami: a forest people. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Milliken, W. (1999). Structure and composition of one hectare of central Amazonian terra firme forest. Biotropica 30 (4): 530-537.

Milliken, W. & Ratter, J.A. (eds) (1998). Maracá - The Biodiversity and Environment of an Amazonian Rainforest. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.

Milliken, W. (1997). Traditional anti-malarial medicine in Roraima, Brazil. Economic Botany 51 (3): 212-237.

Milliken, W. & Albert, B. (1997). The use of medicinal plants by the Yanomami Indians of Brazil II. Economic Botany 51 (3): 264-278.