20 
THE CORAL TRIANGLE: HEARST BIODIVERSITY EXPEDITION 
Photo 1. Weevil from the rainforests of southern Luzon Island. Photo by M. Lewin. All photos in this artiele are eour- 
tesy of the California Aeademy of Seienees. 
the fourth-largest natural history museum in the U.S., and the only one to inelude an aquarium and 
planetarium — shares with its sister institutions a eommitment to the emerging industry-standard 
elements, but also desires to promote the soeietal aspeets as mueh as possible. In 2011, the Aead¬ 
emy undertook a biologieal researeh and edueation expedition that, from its ineeption, was 
designed to inelude edueational outreaeh, media eoverage, and eonservation poliey eonferences as 
well as biotie surveys. It also invited host eountry scientists, educators, and conservationists to join 
as expedition planners, participants, and partners. This article outlines how the 2011 Philippines 
Biodiversity Expedition came into being, how it was conducted, its results, its impacts before, dur¬ 
ing and after, and significant lessons learned. 
The intent of the expedition from the beginning was to not only conduct groundbreaking 
research and discovery of novel biodiversity, but also to bring the day-by-day activities of the expe¬ 
dition to life for diverse public audiences in the Philippines and in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 
to help them understand the larger environmental context. It was hoped that this effort to reach out 
via local and international media, as well as educational sessions, would create an atmosphere in 
which local community members, museum visitors, and virtual visitors could participate in the 
expedition. Public audiences would be receiving information as the science was occurring. A final 
goal was that the expedition would use education and science in the Philippines to create aware¬ 
ness about environmental issues, in the expectation that awareness — when combined with scien¬ 
tific results — could foster more sustainable conservation outcomes. 
Modern expeditions have varied greatly in their degree of involvement with host-country sci¬ 
entists and students, but most have not been designed from inception to maximize the local, in¬ 
country impact of the scientific results. Similarly, back at the home institution, the focus in the past 
has been more on the scientific objectives rather than leveraging a breadth of interactions to engage 
museum visitors, teachers, students, and the media with the science. 
A new integrated model for expeditions that includes scientists, students, educators, animal 
husbandry experts, and media teams reflects an ethic that contemporary scientific information has 
to be more than knowledge for knowledge’s sake. This new model operates on an understanding 
