In 1989, Conservation International, in collaboration with The Field Museum, launched the Rapid Assessment Program (RAP). RAP sends teams of expert biologists and host country scientists into the field to conduct rapid, large-scale surveys of remote tropical areas with high conservation potential. The results are provided to international funding agencies and local decision makers - politicians, leaders and conservationists, who can set priorities and guide conservation action. Doug Stotz and Robin Foster provide expertise on birds and plants to the team that is training land managers, foresters, park guards and scientists in South America to conduct their own rapid biological inventories.

Doug Stotz was born in Key West, Florida, and studied at the University of Arizona and the University of Chicago. Robin Foster was born in Los Angeles, California, and studied at Dartmouth College and Duke University.