Natural Resource Management Leadership Stories
For the Yurok tribe, fishing isn’t a recreational weekend activity to be paired with a cold beer. It’s a way of subsistence, a way of life. Fellow Keith Parker’s groundbreaking biology research regarding a new subspecies of Pacific lamprey, recently published in the science journal Molecular Ecology, may be the key to saving his tribe’s way of life.Read more >
Becky Cushing, Mass Audubon’s Berkshire Sanctuaries director, is soaring. She is supervising six properties, hosting bird walks and organizing concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She says of her new home, "I feel like the Berkshires has all these hidden places to explore that make you feel like the first person to have found them."Read more >
Fellow Marissa McMahan is working with Maine locals and Venetian fishermen to turn the invasive green crab into a gourmet dish known in Italy as moleche.Read more >
Switzer Fellow and Colorado State University Professor Maria Fernández-Giménez has received the Order of the Polar Star from the government of Mongolia, the highest civilian honor the country presents to foreign nationals. Fernández-Giménez was selected due to her long-standing commitment to researching Mongolia’s extensive rangelands and how natural and human communities are adapting to ecological and economic change.Read more >
A new study of market-based forest conservation schemes in Chile provides rare insight into the effectiveness of this relatively new approach to preventing deforestation. The schemes, known as non-state, market-driven (NSMD) governance regimes reduced deforestation on participating properties by between 2 and 23 percent, conclude Switzer Fellow Robert Heilmayr and Eric Lambin.Read more >
Brenda Zollitsch (2009), whose work as a policy analyst at the Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM) is partially funded by a Switzer Leadership Grant, says one underappreciated challenge in addressing wetland loss is a chasm between the management of these issues between programs.Read more >
We have a number of Fellows leading in Sonoma County, working to understand the impacts of climate change at a micro level and develop solutions to improve local resiliency to climate change impacts that could be rolled out nationally.Read more >
To conservationist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, getting coastal communities involved in plans to protect their waters is critical for protecting the planet's oceans. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, she talks about her work in one Caribbean island and how it shows how such a strategy can get results.Read more >
Amy Clipp gave a webinar for us that offered ideas for bridging the gap between science and policy, with a particular focus on helping scientists apply their work in complex, political environments. Her stories are based on lessons learned advising the State of Louisiana on its 2012 Coastal Master Plan.Read more >
Michael S. Stevens is the Co-Founder and Principal of Pioneer Mountain Group, an environmental consulting firm based in Hailey, Idaho. PMG provides a range of management, conservation, scientific and natural resource production and marketing services to clients including non-profit organizations,...Read more >
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