MONTH    DAY    SPEAKER

Jan               19         Fengyi "Freda"Guo *

Feb               9          James Prosek *

Feb               23         Axel Hunnicutt CDFW Wolf Coordinator, "The return of an apex predator: California’s conservation of gray wolves"

Mar               8          Intro to The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center for Data Science & Environment (DSE), developing data-enabled solutions to our most pressing environmental challenges

Mar               22         Daniel Okamoto, Assistant Professor of Global Change Biology, "Coastal oceans under global change" 

Apr               5           Emily Chen Finishing Talk, Population dynamics of Chinook salmon and implications for fisheries and water in the state

Apr               19         Mitch Serota Finishing Talk, "Pumas and penguins: how an unexpected interaction reshapes the ecology of coastal Patagonia"

May               3         Jessie Moravek Finishing Talk, "Freshwater restoration in California: Exploring how floodplain reconnection, habitat restoration, and species reintroduction influence freshwater resources at a landscape scale"

May               10         Avery Shawler Finishing Talk,  "Ecological & social challenges of wolf-livestock conflict: wolf-elk interactions & local perspectives in the eastern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem"

* Please note, most talks are from 12noon-1pm, but 1/19 is from 1-2pm and 2/9 is from 10-11am.  We will update the events page with talk details the week of each talk.

To combat ongoing declines of biodiversity worldwide, conservationists are increasingly looking to restore wildlife populations, with a central objective to re-establish their ecological influence. However, the ecological outcomes of wildlife restoration have been inconsistent, in part due to the significant ecosystem changes that have occurred over the time following the extirpation of target species. In Patagonia, the local eradication of mainland predators at the turn of the 20th century is believed to have triggered the expansion of Magellanic penguin colonies across the Atlantic coast of Argentina. Today, large-scale rewilding and conservation initiatives in the region have led to local recoveries of mainland predators, like the puma, leading to a novel predator-prey dynamic between pumas and penguins. This presentation will highlight the impact of this novel marine resource on puma behavior and density, as well as its impact on their primary prey, guanacos. 

Nearshore marine ecosystems are among the most productive ecosystems on the planet, host diverse assemblages of ecologically, economically, and culturally important species, and also lie on the front lines of climate change.   Yet like many ecosystems, classic models of organismal and ecological dynamics have often underpredicted effects of harvest and climate.  I will present recent work showing how measuring and modeling processes such as energetic plasticity, acclimatization, consumer-resource dynamics, and metapopulation structure can substantially improve our understanding of how individuals, populations, and ecosystems respond to climate change and harvest.

Please join us Today, 2/23/24 from 12noon-1pm for a talk from Axel Hunnicutt, CDFW Wolf Coordinator for a talk titled:  "The Return of an Apex Predator: California’s Conservation of Gray Wolves,"

The talk will take place in 36 Mulford Hall.  Or you can join by zoom using this link.  Please see below for a short description of the talk.

In this presentation, I will speak on the historic return and current status of gray wolves in California, and the social, ecological, and economic challenges posed by their recolonization. I’ll share CDFW’s efforts for conservation and recovery planning of the species, as well as our efforts in the field of population monitoring and community engagement. Lastly, as the new state wolf coordinator, whose career has largely been spent working with African carnivores, I’ll link the parallels of predator management and conflict across continents, highlighting the hope of success for the future of wolves in California.
 

Migratory landbirds are experiencing dramatic population declines in North America, but little is known about the important habitats they use as stopover sites during migration. We used data from weather surveillance radar to map seasonal stopover densities of landbirds across the eastern U.S. during spring and autumn migrations. We identified stopover hotspots covering 2.47 million hectares that consistently support high densities of migrants across years. However, only 16.7% of these sites are hotspots in both seasons. Deciduous forest is the most important habitat type, with high concentrations of birds in forest fragments embedded in broadly deforested regions, especially in spring. While protected areas have higher stopover densities of birds, only 1/3 of hotspots are covered, and many of these protected areas are still subject to extractive uses. We also found evidence that the agricultural Midwest is an anthropogenic migration barrier for many landbirds, affecting their flight and stopover behaviors. In summary, a well-distributed network of well-protected stopover areas, complementing conservation efforts on the breeding and wintering grounds, is essential to sustaining healthy populations of migratory landbirds in North America.

Our speaker for this week - is Dr. Sudeep Chandra, A Professor of Limnology in the Biology Department at the University of Nevada, Reno (USA), Sudeep Chandra serves as Director of the University’s Global Water Center: Solutions for Sustainability, the Ozmen Institute for Global Studies, and is the former Co-Director for the Lake Tahoe Science Advisory Council.

In his seminar, Sudeep will discuss efforts to conserve Lake Tahoe

Please join us on Friday (10/27) from 12-1pm for our next installment in the Wildlife Seminar Series.

This week's speaker is Marisa McGrew, Fisheries & Natural Resources Specialist for the Shawir Darrudaluduk Natural Resources Department. McGrew's seminar is titled: "Gou’daw (Pacific lamprey) in the Eel River"

Harshad Karandikar, ESPM Grad Student

Kendall Calhoun, ESPM Grad Student

Anders Goksøyr, Professor and Fulbright Arctic Chair, U. Bergen