Conservation Science

Fellow Story

Deiner publishes on refined eDNA tool

Rather than conduct an aquatic roll call with nets to know which fish reside in a particular body of water, scientists can now use DNA fragments suspended in water to catalog invasive or native species. The research from Cornell, the University of Notre Dame and Hawaii Pacific University was published July 14 in Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Read more
July 17, 2017
Fellow

Natalya Gallo

2017 Fellow
Natalya Gallo is a PhD candidate in biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD and is an NSF graduate research fellow and a fellow of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. Her dissertation...
Fellow

Samantha Alger

2017 Fellow
Samantha Alger is an Environmental Scientist/Pollinator Specialist at Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB) and a Research Affiliate in the Plant and Soil Science Department at the University of Vermont. She currently works to improve the...
Fellow

Joan Dudney

2017 Fellow
Joan Dudney is an Assistant Professor of Global Change Ecology at the Bren School and the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Research in the Landscapes of Change (LOC) Lab is focused on...
Fellow Story

Communicating simply about a complex ocean ecosystem

Reducing the complexity of research on ocean ecosystems does not mean dumbing down your science, it means delivering science in a series of short chapters. If you can get the readers hooked, and don’t confuse them, you can tell a complex story. But that takes work and training that many scientists don’t have, writes Fellow Linwood Pendleton.
April 19, 2017
Fellow Story

Zavaleta finds declining plant diversity causes earlier flowering

Researchers have revealed that declining plant diversity — from habitat loss, human use, and other environmental pressures — causes plants to flower earlier, and that the effects of diversity loss on the timing of flowering are similar in magnitude to the effects of global warming. The finding could have a powerful influence on the way scientists study ecosystem changes and measure the effects of global warming. Read more
April 4, 2017
Fellow Story

Elbroch wins award for work on mountain lions

Mark Elbroch, who leads the Teton Cougar Project, was bestowed with the Craighead Conservation Award, which has gone out to the likes of Steve Kilpatrick, Bruce Smith, Franz Camenzind, and Debra and Susan Patla. Read more
March 31, 2017
Fellow Story

Hameed writes MPAs conserve highly-mobile species like sharks, too

Well-regulated and well-managed marine protected areas (MPAs) established in biologically significant places benefit marine wildlife [1]. One lingering question, however, has been about the value of MPAs for conserving highly-mobile species, like sharks, that move easily across their boundaries. Robust shark populations are necessary to keep marine ecosystems healthy, and many shark populations are threatened by shark finning.
February 25, 2017
Fellow Story

Colorado's wild places: Deer today, gone tomorrow?

Fellow Sarah Reed argues for providing local communities in Colorado with the resources they need — including information about where important wildlife habitats are located, and planning tools and technical assistance to protect those habitats — to achieve a reasonable balance between conservation and development.
February 21, 2017
Fellow Story

Engaging communities to save threatened seabirds

In the southern Pacific Ocean, off south-central Chile, is a wind-swept island with a mountain blanketed in old-growth forest. This mountain is inhabited by 70% of the world’s Pink-footed Shearwaters, a globally threatened seabird related to albatrosses. The island is called Isla Mocha (pronounced with a hard “ch”: Mo-cha), and is also home to around 600 Mochanos—residents who live in the plains below the mountain, harvesting shellfish and seaweed, grazing cattle and sheep, and fishing in the ferocious currents that roil around the island.
February 15, 2017