Natural Resource Management

The Breakthrough Institute is proud to announce Steven Pinker, Ariane de Bremond, Sarah Evanega, and Julio Friedmann as our 2018 Senior Fellows. This is the tenth year that Breakthrough has conferred Senior Fellowships to leading scholars who have shaped our research and vision. This class of Senior Fellows will join the ranks of the 45 prominent experts who have joined our network of global thought leaders committed to building a future that is good for both humans and nature. We are grateful to be able to count upon their expertise, counsel, and inspiration.

Editor's note: The following story first appeared in The Press Democrat. Switzer Fellow Lisa Micheli is President and CEO of the Pepperwood Foundation, which operates the Pepperwood Preserve. Green stalks of redwood lilies grow beneath the giant trees at Pepperwood Preserve, but no one has seen the colorful, trumpet-shaped blossoms in decades.

Abstract

Fellow Ayana Johnson says after a natural disaster (strengthened by our warmer planet) is exactly the time to talk about environmental conservation. It protects lives and property, and makes places like Puerto Rico far more self-reliant when disaster strikes.

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."

Margaret Torn, a senior scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)’s Earth & Environmental Sciences Area (EESA), has been named by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) as a 2017 AGU Fellow. Every year, the AGU Fellows program recognizes members who have made exceptional contributions to the Earth and space sciences. Vetted by a committee of AGU Fellows, honorees represent no more than 0.1 percent of AGU’s 60,000 members.

Rising sea levels, as well as droughts and earthquakes, threaten the levees protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta, which supplies 25 million Californians with fresh water. But the state’s solution isn’t to build higher but lower—150 ft below the earth.