Joseph is currently a Research Scientist in Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech. He did his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). His dissertation research has focused on the ecology of infectious wildlife diseases. He...
Megan is a NatureNet Science Fellow at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and The Nature Conservancy. She is a specialist in blue carbon, the carbon stored in coastal vegetated ecosystems such as salt marshes, seagrass...
Kathy's research uses theory and methods from landscape ecology, wildlife biology, biostatistics, landscape genetics and conservation biology to model animal populations, movement, and habitat use in both wildlands and human-dominated...
The few remaining places in the wider Caribbean with relatively healthy reefs have one thing in common: a greater abundance of parrotfish and other herbivores. They also benefit by being adjacent to islands with comparatively small populations, more modest development and less pollution. You find this in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico, on reefs around Curaçao and Bonaire and in protected marine areas in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.
Woodland Park Zoo, which has had elephants in its care since 1921, started discussing the future of its herd after a third pachyderm died in 2014. A community task force recommended in 2013 that the zoo bring in more elephants and expand its facilities, but zoo President and CEO Deborah Jensen said those goals were not achievable, in part because it's so difficult to obtain new elephants. Read more
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.
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.
