Land Use & Open Space Conservation

When Jack Connelly first began studying the greater sage grouse in Idaho in the late 1970s, "it was not unusual to see 500 in a single flock," says the biologist, who is retired from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. "Today, it would be unusual to see 200." That dramatic decline has made the sage grouse—a large, pointy-tailed bird with showy mating habits—the subject of one of the biggest endangered species battles ever in the United States.

On March 25th at the UC Davis Conference Center, the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN) awarded three individuals for their leadership in the field of agriculture and climate change. Awards are given to experts in three areas: Policy; Science; and Farming or Ranching. ...

“It’s a way to achieve conservation in the context of development that is going to happen anyway,” says Sarah Reed, a conservation biologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society and affiliate faculty member at Colorado State University studying conservation developments. Conservation developments already account for a quarter of the private land set aside in the U.S. As their popularity grows, ecologists and conservation biologists like Reed are working to identify how to design, regulate and manage them to make them most helpful for biodiversity.

State Forestry is regarded by political ecologists as a coercive tool deployed by state authorities to nationalize, control and order the forest as a resource within the territory of a nation. The consequence of this is civilizing local people and subjecting them to the grip of the state. Much of this literature comes from the global South.