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Upcoming Seminar

Wildlife Seminar Fall ‘26 Stratton Hatfield, The Band Foundation Claire Okell, The Pangolin Project Southern Kenya: Biodiversity and communities across a connected conservation landscape Talk description Southern Kenya spans roughly 52,000 square miles of extraordinary ecological diversity, from the plains of the Mara Serengeti and the volcanoes of the Rift Valley to tropical forests, arid woodlands, alkaline lakes, and wetlands. Beyond its famous large mammals, the region holds a lesser-known and often threatened diversity of plants, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and small mammals — from naked mole rats and Sagalla caecilians to Athi elephant snout fish and tiger tooth aloe. Much of this biodiversity lives outside protected areas, sharing the land with Maasai, Kamba, Taita, Waata, and other communities whose histories are deeply tied to these ecosystems. This talk explores Southern Kenya as a connected conservation landscape whose ecological and cultural diversity demands equally diverse approaches. It focuses on the Nyekweri ecosystem and The Pangolin Project’s work to protect what may be Kenya’s last population of giant ground pangolins, surviving on land owned by the Siria Maasai. It asks what conservation looks like when the futures of species, habitats, and communities are inseparable — and confronts a deeper tension: as the world pushes toward individual decisions for financial gain, wildlife depends on collective landscapes to survive. Can conservation shift back toward collective decision-making — or is that tension the fundamental vulnerability of the community conservation model Southern Kenya relies on? Bio: Stratton Hatfield, Director of Conservation Science & East Africa Program Lead, The Band Foundation Stratton is a naturalist, conservationist, and researcher with 12+ years across East and Southern Africa, focused on conserving rare and threatened species through community-led approaches. Before BAND, he helped establish the Mara Raptor Project and the Kwenia Vulture Sanctuary under the Kenya Bird of Prey Trust. He serves on the Africa Regional Advisory Group for Avilist and advises the Mountain Bongo Project and The Pangolin Project. He holds an M.S. in Forest and Natural Resource Sciences from the University of Kentucky and is completing a PhD on Martial Eagle ecology at Wageningen University. Outside work, he enjoys birding, wildlife photography, and exploring wild places with his partner Britt. Bio: Dr. Claire Okell, Director of The Pangolin Project, BVSc PhD After clinical practice and a PhD in Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health from the Royal Veterinary College (research on livestock health in drought-affected areas of the Horn of Africa), Claire worked in humanitarian and development roles across South Sudan, northern Kenya, and Somalia. Drawn to pangolins as the overlooked underdogs of the wildlife world, she founded The Pangolin Project in 2020. In 2022, her investigation of an unusual sighting led to a landmark discovery: the Giant Ground Pangolin, long thought extinct in Kenya, still living in Nyekweri Forest. She now leads a 40-person team securing land and restoring 7,000 hectares of forest through evidence-based community conservation. Friday 10/9/26, 12noon-1pm, Mulford Room 36 or https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/98719811098

Wildlife Seminar
10/9/26, 12noon-1pm


Stratton Hatfield (The Band Foundation) &
Claire Okell (The Pangolin Project)


Southern Kenya: Biodiversity and communities across a connected conservation landscape


Mulford Room 36 or https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/98719811098

Wildlife Seminar
10/16/26, 12noon-1pm



Lyman and Safari Award Recipient


https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/94129973803

To be added to our list, email us at berkeleywildlife@berkeley.edu

Fall ’26 Schedule

-9/4, Yun Sing Koh, Director of the Centre of Machine Learning for Social Good, Te Kura Matai Rorohiko School of Computer Science, University of Auckland AI for Wildlife Monitoring and Ecological Intelligence: A New Zealand Perspective -9/18, Jesse Andrews, Screenwriter/Novelist, How to Write a Top Grossing Movie About Riparian Ecosystem Restoration -10/9, Stratton Hatfield and Claire Okell Southern Kenya: Biodiversity and Communities Across a Connected Conservation Landscape -10/16, Lyman and Safari Award Recipient Speed Talks 10/23, Sharon Zou, Cooperative Extension Specialist in Community Economic Development/Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Conservation Finance at the Intersection of Wildlife, Recreation, and Tourism -10/30, John P. Casellas Connors, Associate Professor of Geography, Assistant Director of Environmental Programs, Texas A&M University The Conservation of Guns: How Wildlife Management Has Been Shaped by Gun Politics -11/13, Carl Boettiger, Associate Professor ESPM AI for decision support in land and wildlife conservation -11/20, Tucker Russell, Tribal Liaison, Stone Center for Environmental Stewardship Disease in a Fragmented Landscape: Movement, Habitat Use, and Survival of Mule Deer with a High Prevalence of Chronic Wasting Disease

Previous Seminars

Wildlife Seminar Fall ‘26 Jesse Andrews, Screenwriter and Novelist How to Write a Top Grossing Movie About Riparian Ecosystem Restoration Talk Description: On the one hand, commercial storytelling—e.g., big-budget animated movies—can reach enormous global audiences. On the other hand, commercial storytellers are under relentless pressure from their corporate overlords to oversimplify reality and provide emotional uplift at the expense of complexity, nuance, and even truth itself. Is it possible to entertain millions and at the same time expand their understanding of the world? The answer is: Maybe! Sometimes! Sort of!! Bio: Jesse Andrews is a novelist, filmmaker, and former German youth hostel receptionist. Most recently, he is the screenwriter of Pixar’s HOPPERS. Other movies he has written include LUCA and ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL, which he adapted from his own bestselling novel of the same name. Together with his friend Trevor Jimenez, he is currently co-directing and co-writing GHOST MARKET, another feature film for Pixar. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Schenley High School and Harvard University. He lives in the Bay Area with his family. Friday 9/18/26, 12noon-1pm, Mulford Room 36 or https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/99556744478 https://wildlife.berkeley.edu

Wildlife Seminar
9/18/26, 12noon-1pm

Jesse Andrews


Screenwriter and Novelist


How to Write a Top Grossing Movie About Riparian Ecosystem Restoration


Mulford Room 36 or https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/99556744478

Flyer with the following text: Wildlife Seminar Fall ‘26 Professor Yun Sing Koh, Director of the Centre of Machine Learning for Social Good, Te Kura Matai Rorohiko School of Computer Science, The University of Auckland AI for Wildlife Monitoring and Ecological Intelligence: A New Zealand Perspective Artificial intelligence has achieved remarkable advances in perception and recognition, yet many AI systems continue to struggle in dynamic, open-world environments where data distributions evolve, labelled examples are limited, and new concepts emerge over time. Wildlife conservation presents precisely these challenges. Building AI that can operate reliably in natural ecosystems therefore requires advances beyond conventional supervised learning, spanning continual learning, open-world recognition, multimodal foundation models, uncertainty estimation, and trustworthy AI. New Zealand provides a unique testbed for this research. Its distinctive biodiversity, together with ambitious conservation programmes targeting introduced predators and endangered native species, creates opportunities to develop AI methods that must adapt to changing environments while supporting real-world conservation decisions. In this talk, I will present recent AI research from the Centre for Machine Learning for Social Good at the University of Auckland, where we are developing intelligent systems for long-term wildlife monitoring in dynamic, open-world environments. Our work spans computer vision, multimodal foundation models, continual learning, open-world recognition, and trustworthy AI to enable the identification of individual animals, adaptation to changing ecosystems, and learning from limited and evolving data. These challenges are motivating new advances in representation learning, robust multimodal reasoning, and AI systems capable of reliable long-term deployment beyond benchmark datasets. The talk will conclude by examining how wildlife conservation is driving advances in artificial intelligence. The need for AI systems that can recognise new individuals, adapt to changing environments, learn continuously, and make reliable decisions under uncertainty is motivating research that extends beyond conservation and contributes to the development of more general, robust, and trustworthy intelligent systems. Artificial intelligence has achieved remarkable advances in perception and recognition, yet many AI systems continue to struggle in dynamic, open-world environments where data distributions evolve, labelled examples are limited, and new concepts emerge over time. Wildlife conservation presents precisely these challenges. Building AI that can operate reliably in natural ecosystems therefore requires advances beyond conventional supervised learning, spanning continual learning, open-world recognition, multimodal foundation models, uncertainty estimation, and trustworthy AI. New Zealand provides a unique testbed for this research. Its distinctive biodiversity, together with ambitious conservation programmes targeting introduced predators and endangered native species, creates opportunities to develop AI methods that must adapt to changing environments while supporting real-world conservation decisions. In this talk, I will present recent AI research from the Centre for Machine Learning for Social Good at the University of Auckland, where we are developing intelligent systems for long-term wildlife monitoring in dynamic, open-world environments. Our work spans computer vision, multimodal foundation models, continual learning, open-world recognition, and trustworthy AI to enable the identification of individual animals, adaptation to changing ecosystems, and learning from limited and evolving data. These challenges are motivating new advances in representation learning, robust multimodal reasoning, and AI systems capable of reliable long-term deployment beyond benchmark datasets. The talk will conclude by examining how wildlife conservation is driving advances in artificial intelligence. The need for AI systems that can recognise new individuals, adapt to changing environments, learn continuously, and make reliable decisions under uncertainty is motivating research that extends beyond conservation and contributes to the development of more general, robust, and trustworthy intelligent systems. Friday 9/4/26, 12noon-1pm, Mulford Room 36 or https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/94180561590 info: wildlife.berkeley.edu

Wildlife Seminar
9/4/26, 12noon-1pm

Professor Yun Sing Koh


Director of the Centre of Machine Learning for Social Good, Te Kura Matai Rorohiko School of Computer Science, The University of Auckland


AI for Wildlife Monitoring and Ecological Intelligence: A New Zealand Perspective


Mulford Room 36 or https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/94180561590