This City is Wild: Conservation and Management in an Urban National Park Site
Recent ESPM alum, Dr. Phoebe Parker-Shames, shares some of her multi-disciplinary wildlife management and monitoring projects as the Wildlife Ecologist for the Presidio of San Francisco. The Presidio is a unique national park site that mirrors the larger challenges and opportunities of managing wildlife within human-dominated systems, and is an is an ideal research location for students interested in tackling real-world conservation challenges. Located less than an hour’s drive from Berkeley, this park might just be your next dream field site.
This talk will explore three ongoing projects that highlight the complexity of urban conservation: restoring one of the Bay Area’s oldest freshwater lakes; managing human-coyote interactions to foster coexistence; and preparing a reintroduction plan for California quail—the state bird—to one of the nation’s most visited national park sites. These examples will illustrate the process of research-informed management decision-making in a park that balances conservation, recreation, and commercial use.