Francis E. "Jack" Putz (born 23 March 1952) is an American ecologist and distinguished professor at the University of Florida, known for his research on climbing plants (lianas), tropical forest ecology, and sustainable forest management. He is a former president of the Association for Tropical Biology and Jefferson Science Fellow with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Education Putz earned a bachelor's degree in Science Education from the University of Wisconsin in 1973. Prior to beginning graduate studies, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the Forest Research Institute in Malaysia from 1973 to 1976.
He completed his Ph.D. in ecology at Cornell University in 1982 and held a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford, where he conducted his research on tropical forestry.
Career Putz has been a faculty member at the University of Florida since 1982, where he became a Distinguished Professor in 2016.
He served as President of the Association for Tropical Biology in 1996 and was a Bullard Fellow at Harvard University in 2002. From 2004 to 2009, he held the Prince Bernhard Chair of International Conservation at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He was the Senior Fulbright Research Fellow at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2006, Jefferson Science Fellow with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, D.C. and Indonesia from 2017 to 2018. He also held research professorship at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia from 2023 to 2026.
Putz was a senior associate with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) where he conducted research and policy discussions on sustainable tropical forest management and local capacity building in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
Research His work integrates natural history, biomechanics, silviculture, savanna restoration, fire ecology, and conservation science, with a long-standing emphasis on managing tropical forests for biodiversity conservation, global climate change mitigation, and rural development.
Putz also focuses on the study of lianas (woody climbing plants). His early work on their natural history, abundance, and climbing strategies helped establish liana ecology as a distinct field within tropical forest science.
Putz's research on tropical forestry began with a focus on silviculture (applied forest ecology) but evolved into a broader, transdisciplinary approach that integrates ecology, economics, and policy.
In 1993, he introduced Reduced-Impact Logging (RIL) as a financially viable approach to lowering carbon emissions from timber harvests.
Selected publications Books and chapters
Journals
See also Reduced-impact logging
References