CDFW Conservation Lecture Series Archive

In honor of Pollinator Week, we will be celebrating California’s pollinators. While honey bees are an important managed pollinator for California’s agriculture there are thousands of other species of pollinators in our state. This presentation will be an exploration into the vast diversity of California pollinators, from bees to flies to birds and even bats! This lecture will also highlight key pollinator projects being implemented by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. 

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The CALeDNA program amasses tens of thousands of environmental collections that are used in grassroots research projects to explore biodiversity composition and change across the whole tree of life. The techniques CALeDNA uses that have become quite standard -- eDNA metabarcoding and qPCR -- can also illuminate what underpins these patterns of composition and change. By integrating CALeDNA data from different projects and with other observations from iNaturalist to satellites, we are developing exciting insights to advance ecological knowledge and enable nature-based solutions. In this presentation, I'll share eDNA-based findings on how habitats reassemble after disturbances like aquatic invasive species or wildfire, how eDNA biodiversity surveys are assisting practitioners in natural areas management and innovation. Because of its utility, eDNA science needs to be shared in new ways that are more accessible than publications. I will also present new tools for sharing eDNA results so we can help each other biomonitor and gain insights in real-time. 

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An exploration of the intriguing ramifications of artificial light at night on species, habitats, and ecosystems. This lecture delves into the far-reaching consequences of our illuminated nightscape, shedding light on how it affects the behavior, physiology, and ecological interactions of diverse organisms, from nocturnal wildlife to plants and their pollinators. Discover how understanding and mitigating light pollution is necessary for the management of natural landscapes, reserves, and connectivity. 

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In 2003, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife published a collection of full color maps, photographs, and written accounts of the state's diverse wildlife species and habitats, called the Atlas of the Biodiversity of California. CDFW has now published the 2nd Edition of the Atlas online on its 20th anniversary. Join us to explore this beautifully illustrated digital version, which highlights Department efforts to chronicle, understand, and protect the natural resources that are California's heritage. 

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Climate change has implications for both the effectiveness and hazard risk potential of many projects and activities undertaken or reviewed by natural resource managers. Failing to evaluate the potential vulnerability of a project or action prior to implementation or approval can lead to missed opportunities to improve design, optimize siting or otherwise reduce risk. The "Adaptation Checklist for Climate Smart Projects" is a tool that can be used by conservation practitioners across agencies and organizations to help determine how climate change might impact a given project, and which adaptation options may be most appropriate to apply. While this tool is most easily used in evaluating a place-based project, it can be used to assess the climate savviness of many types of natural resource management-related actions as well as policies.

An increased demand for renewable energy, sparked by both public consciousness and recent government mandates, makes it imperative that the impacts to wildlife of associated activities be investigated and mitigated when possible. Migratory birds represent a particularly vulnerable group to renewable energy development, due to their potential exposure to facilities (both wind and solar) along migratory routes. Prof. Harrigan will describe newly-developed genetic identification methods for migratory birds in a hotspot of renewable energy development (the California Desert Southwest) that can allow us to better understand the effects to migratory birds of renewable energy activities, and that can help inform future management and siting strategies. 

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Habitat restoration and the management of invasive species are important strategies for conserving biodiversity, especially in recently burned areas which are especially vulnerable to invasion. To help managers prioritize restoration locations, Conservation Biology Institute, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, and United States Forest Service collaborated to create a new, replicable tool and approach for better combining field data with decision science. Because the data needs for this approach are high, especially in scaling it up to all fires, we experimented with tapping into the vast potential of community scientists (i.e. citizen scientists) and compared the resulting data with those collected by professionals. We then converted the research grade point data into population polygons, and combined with region-wide GIS data in a logic model that includes three criteria branches (sub-models): invasive species, erosion risk, and natural species regeneration capacity. For the invasive species branch, we programmed the Weed Heuristics Invasive Population Prioritization for Eradication Tool (WHIPPET) into an extension of the Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS), along with some additional, optional criteria, then looped it so it analyzes every species in a single model run and combines their results together. We also evaluated the community science contributions compared to professional expert contributions, and evaluated the decision support system with an expert-opinion based field assessment.

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Conservation efforts and other land management decisions are often intended to result in multiple benefits, but real or perceived trade-offs between goals, such as ecological and economic benefits, can contribute to conflict. To support knowledge-sharing across sectors and more informed decision-making, and with funding from the Proposition 1 Delta Water Quality and Ecosystem Restoration Program administered by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (Grant Agreement Number–Q1996022), we developed a flexible framework for evaluating multidimensional impacts of future landscape change in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. With input from local agencies and conservation organizations, we identified two major drivers of landscape change to evaluate: meeting habitat restoration objectives and continued expansion of perennial crops. We developed three scenarios representing the forecasted change resulting by 2050 from each driver independently, as well as a combination of the two, and we integrated multiple data sources and models to forecast the net impact of each scenario on metrics representing multiple categories of benefits: agricultural livelihoods, water quality, climate change resilience, and biodiversity support. We found that each scenario produced a mix of benefits and trade-offs, and the direction and magnitude of the projected impacts on each metric varied across scenarios. Our results provide a multidimensional understanding of the potential impacts of these scenarios to support more informed conservation and policy decision-making, while our framework is designed to be flexibly updated to incorporate additional metrics, data, and models, and to evaluate new scenarios. 

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Since 2016, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has been working to include methods to incorporate future climate change into engineering designs of fish passage facilities and stream crossings. The results of these efforts are detailed in this document titled NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region Guidance to Improve the Resilience of Fish Passage Facilities to Climate Change subsequently referred to as Improving Resilience. The intended users of Improving Resilience are NMFS engineers and biologists, along with applicants and their consultants. One of the goals of the document is to assist parties in satisfying NMFS regulatory authorities and NMFS’ policy on the treatment of climate change in Endangered Species Act (ESA) decisions. Improving Resilience provides the processes and tools needed to incorporate climate resiliency into the design of fish passage facilities and represents the first in a series of documents applicants should use when designing a fish passage project in the West Coast Region (WCR), which encompasses California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. 

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Year-round occupancy of cliff swallow mud-nests by several bat species has been observed throughout California, but formal documentation of these observations is limited to project reports. Bats roosting in cliff swallow mud-nests will be subject to direct impacts if they are present when these nests are removed to prevent swallows from nesting. In 2022, the California Bat Working Group compiled records from working group members and provided recommendations for take avoidance, including nest inspections and habitat modification to discourage occupancy. Here we'll discuss those records and share information on bat roosts in cliff swallow mud-nests. 

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