CDFW Conservation Lecture Series Archive

Illegal poaching and wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest transcontinental crime, worth an estimated $20 billion each year. In an effort to curb ivory trafficking in California, a law was enacted in 2015 (AB 96, codified as Fish and Game Code section 2022) that prohibits the purchase, sale, offer for sale, possession with intent to sell, or importation with intent to sell of ivory from elephant, mammoth, and mastodon as well as other non-proboscidean species. The CDFW Forensics Lab has developed an assay that can distinguish between the 4 proboscidean taxa protected under California’s ivory law and are required to either be identified or excluded from casework consideration - African elephant (Loxodonta spp.), Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), mammoth (Mammuthus spp.), and mastodon (Mammut spp.). Kelly discusses this assay and its utility, as well as her efforts to geolocate African elephant ivory to its source country using a combination of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, thereby increasing the utility of this assay in law enforcement situations.

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Dr. Hugh Safford summarizes historical, current, and projected future patterns and trends in fire and vegetation in California. Burned area is increasing rapidly in California (and principally in northern California), but in most years it is still notably below pre-Euroamerican settlement averages. The real issue is the way that fires are burning, not their area. Huge increases in the amount of forest fire area burning at high severity (aka "stand-replacing") are leading to issues with forest regeneration, vegetation type conversion, ecosystem services, and loss of key habitat for important wildlife species of conservation concern.

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Fire is both a widespread natural disturbance that affects the distribution and abundance of species and a tool that can be used to manage habitats for species. Knowledge of temporal changes in the occurrence of species after fire is essential for conservation management in fire-prone environments. Despite the evolutionary importance of fire in California, we are entering an unprecedented period where the dominant nature of fire is rapidly changing, disrupting both human and animal lives. In this lecture, Morgan Tingley discusses the myriad ways that fire shapes the ecology of birds in California and what we know and don’t know about what our flammable future may hold. Recording is no longer available.

Understanding the potential stress of climate change on vegetation can help guide conservation and land management decisions. Climatic stress varies across the distribution of each vegetation type. Vegetation refugia are areas where climatic stress is expected to remain within the tolerance level of a given vegetation type-areas where the vegetation and the species that depend on these habitats might find refuge in the face of climate change. We discuss a vegetation vulnerability and refugia dataset that was developed for California, how this data has been applied to the habitat maps of 522 terrestrial vertebrate species, and other conservation applications of the data.

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Niche models were fitted iteratively between 2015 and 2020 followed by field validation of the predicted suitable sites with focus on suitable sites adjacent to the known locations of Ivesia webberi. True absence points and new locations discovered during field validations were added to the spatial datasets for subsequent niche modeling iterations. This resulted in a significant improvement in the predictive accuracy of the niche models and resulted in the discovery of novel locations and expansion of the range of the threatened plant species.

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The California Conservation Genomics Project is a three-year initiative that will identify species, ecosystems and communities that together can summarize natural genetic variation across the 18 terrestrial ecoregions and entire coastline that comprise California. By collecting genomic data in a consistent way across taxa, we can combine and analyze data from 225 species and ~20,000 fully-sequenced genomes to create the first comprehensive genomic map of the state. We will use this map to identify healthy and at-risk regions of the state, define barriers for management units across species, and guide activities that range from the placement of solar installations to the repatriation of confiscated plants and animals.

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As natural history training has declined in formal education, it has increased among lay audiences. While it continues to address traditional practices and topics, such as field observations of organisms and their behavior, it is increasingly tackling a wide range of issues and topics, including conservation and restoration, climate change, traditional ecological knowledge, and environmental justice. While the rise in citizen science has dramatically increased the number of ways in which the public can engage, significant challenges remain, including large gaps in participation from Black and Indigenous people, and a perennial lack of funding. This lecture describes the unique collaborative approach the California Naturalist program uses to deliver natural history training in this complex milieu and answers the questions: Why are people interested in natural history training, and how does it relate to the work of CDFW?

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This lecture features three talks, covering ongoing studies targeting species' genetics, to support their adaptation to climate change. Dr. Blair McLaughlin and Dr. Jessica Wright discuss the potential for assisted migration and dispersed field gene banks in various California species, and Dr. Patricia Maloney discusses the use of local and diverse seed sources to create drought-resilient restoration projects in Sierra Nevada Conifers.

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Listed salmonids in the Central Valley are blocked from high quality habitat, due to the presence of very large dams. In the Central Valley, there are no fish passage programs at any these dams. However, efforts are underway to evaluate the feasibility of reintroducing salmon and steelhead to historical habitats blocked by rim dams. This talk emphasizes the importance of reintroduction for the long-term viability of listed salmonids and provides an overview of current efforts above Shasta Dam.

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Dr. Rodzen delivers a brief overview of Genetics 101 and conservation genetics topics, followed by a description of some of the latest technological and statistical tools that can be leveraged to provide new answers to fisheries management questions. Dr. Ahrens discusses environmental DNA (eDNA) and its potential role in supporting conservation efforts. Dr. Rodzen is CDFW’s state fisheries geneticist and the lead of the fisheries genetics program. Dr. Ahrens is a Research Scientist II in Microbiological Sciences with CDFW.

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