On February 4-5, 2010, the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future and the new Cornell Center for Wildlife Conservation will co-host a workshop at Cornell University on "Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Traps". This event, which will be held at Cornell's Baker Institute for Animal Health, will bring together a small, select group of social and biological scientists who are explicitly exploring some of the unique challenges associated with biodiversity conservation in areas characterized by widespread chronic poverty or with poverty reduction in areas rich in biodiversity. The objective of this workshop is to explore the connections between poverty traps and biodiversity conservation with greater rigor, to marshal empirical evidence from a range of poor areas so as to begin to assemble a solid evidence base on which to base biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction efforts moving forward.