IRAS Welcomes Dr. Merle Kuns to November Meeting

By Tom Atkinson

For our November meeting we are pleased to announce an illustrated lecture titled, Birds and Land Mammals of South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula by guest speaker Dr. Merle Kuns. The meeting is November 21 at 7:30 p.m. in Calvin Hall at the Rockledge Presbyterian Church, 921 Rockledge Drive, Rockledge, Florida. The lecture is free and open to the public. Dr. Kuns will illustrate his lecture with selections from over 1,100 digital photographs taken during a month-long voyage to the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia Island in the year 2000.

Dr. Kuns is retired from the National Institute of Health, U.S. Public Health Service as a commissioned officer with the rank of Scientist Director. His long career in research on tropical diseases took him from his base laboratory in Panama, to all of the Latin America countries. Dr. Kuns and four of his colleagues were decorated by the President of Bolivia with the Order of the Condor of the Andes, the highest decoration awarded to foreign nationals, for characterizing and bringing under control an epidemic of hemorrhagic fever in remote northeastern Bolivia. He was elected to membership in the Explorer’s Club in 1980 with the rank of Fellow.

Dr. Kuns refers to his sojourn with the elephant seals, pen-gu ins and other birds and mammals of the Antarctic “...a spectacular trip for anyone interested in animals” and a dream come true for himself as a biologist. Because these animals exhibited little or no fear of man, photo opportunities were everywhere. Dr. Kuns studied ornithology under Olin Sewell Pettingill, and has been a member of the Indian River Audubon Society since 1972 and is a former curator of the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science.