NON UT SIBI PART IV:
A Clean Lake Legacy Former director of ornithology for the Florida Audubon Society, Gian Basili ’83 shifted gears five years ago, taking on a $120 million restoration project to remove pollutants from a central Florida lake.
By Bonnie Blackburn Penhollow ’84
W
When Gian Basili was three years old, his Montessori teacher noted his “engrossing interest in nature.” That interest has translated into a career cleaning up one of the most polluted lakes in Florida through cutting-edge practices that may well become the model for the rest of the nation. 18
Taft Bulletin Winter 2005
Despite his early proclivities, it wasn’t until college that Basili’s interest in natural systems really took hold. (As a student at Taft, he says, Al Reiff Sr. discouraged him from taking an ornithology class!—in favor of the more rigorous A.P. Biology.)
Gian Basili ’83, with colleague Barbra Sapp, observing birds at the Lake Apopka restoration area in Florida. MAT O’MALLEY/SJRWMD
While working as a summer intern at a Columbia University lab studying antibiotic resistance genes, Basili would watch a pair of kestrels (small falcons)