Conservation Science

Songs of Spring Underscore Importance of Vernal Pools

Doug Johnson sees the increasingly severe drought in California as a chance to educate people about the importance of invasive plant management at the landscape level in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The Sierras are an important source of water for all of California, with snowpack formed in winter melting over the spring and summer months and running down to the dry parts of the state. Invasives, some of which are known to be water hungry compared to competing vegetation, can reduce the capacity of Sierra meadows to perform this valuable function. For the state’s residents and agricultural industry, this could make a bad problem worse.

It is easy to overlook the pipes and boxes carrying water under our roads, but these parts of our transportation infrastructure can have huge impacts on freshwater health and road safety. 2003 Fellow Jessica Levine is working in the northeastern United States to replace and upgrade road crossings to benefit aquatic species and habitat along with other community goals.

Brad Keitt (1997) has already been working to prevent extinctions caused by non-native species introduced to islands for decades. His non-profit, Island Conservation, prevents extinctions of native species by removing invasive species from islands. But the challenge of climate change has Keitt rethinking how his organization plans its projects and communicates about them.

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.

When it comes to wildlife conservation a huge personality or bags of charisma tends to help your cause. But scientists are beginning to call for more attention to be paid to those that fail to make the list of nature’s big and beautiful.

From picturesque coastal estuaries of Cape Cod to the soaring White Mountains, much of New England's rich native flora is fighting for survival against increasing odds, according to what conservationists call the most comprehensive accounting ever made of the region's plant life. The report, to be released Thursday by the New England Wild Flower Society, studied more than 3,500 known plant species and determined that 22 percent are considered rare, in decline, endangered or possibly extinct. Many plants also range over a much smaller geographical area than they once did.

From the University of California Press Blog: The US Endangered Species Act protects over 2,000 species. Only 10 species have gone extinct after they were listed. On the other hand, only 25 species have been “de-listed” (meaning they’ve recovered enough to be considered safe from extinction). Between those two statistics lie myriad perspectives on how well the ESA has performed since its ground-breaking inception over 40 years ago.

When it comes to wildlife conservation a huge personality or bags of charisma tends to help your cause. Prefacing any group of animals or plants with the words 'big', 'great' or 'giant' seems to win them fans. Big cats, great apes and giant redwoods are all the focus of on-going research, campaigns and policies attempting to preserve them for future generations. The public are easily drawn to helping iconic and visually-impressive species, which in turn leads to their plight being prioritised.