CDFW Conservation Lecture Series Archive

The Citizen Science program at the California Academy of Sciences engages tens of thousands of volunteers in California and beyond to document biodiversity, since understanding when and where species occur at scale can only be done by mobilizing people everywhere to make observations of their local nature. In this talk, Rebecca Johnson and Alison Young, Co-Directors of Citizen Science at the Academy, highlight how they work with partners and communities to do this work and discuss the resulting science, conservation, and stewardship outcomes.

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The Conservation Lands Network ("CLN"), recently updated to version 2.0, is a trusted regional conservation vision designed with local input to increase the pace and scale of terrestrial biodiversity conservation and landscape resilience action in the 10-county SF Bay Area. It sets a bold new goal of 2.5M protected acres (or about half the Bay Area) by 2050, and provides geographic priorities based on quantitative habitat goals set by local experts. CLN 2.0 data are freely accessible via an easy-to-use interactive web map where users can create custom biodiversity and climate reports for their areas of interest.

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California is a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot with more than 6,500 native plant taxa, over a quarter of which are found nowhere else in the world. The California Native Plant Society's Important Plant Areas (IPA) Program seeks to map areas critical for maintaining the integrity of California's botanical diversity. Please join Sam Young, IPA Program Manager, to hear how the IPA program engages regional experts and conservation stakeholders to create a map of California's IPAs, and how this can be implemented for preserving our State's irreplaceable plant diversity.

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Catastrophic wildfires devastate not only the landscape, but also the surrounding surface water quality. In an effort to help address the State's impaired water bodies, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) hopes to help reduce the frequency and severity of catastrophic wildfires through collaboration with other state agencies. Due to a technical issue, no recording is available for this lecture.

Launched in 2018, the California Biodiversity Initiative is a statewide effort to secure the future of California's biodiversity. Such a large undertaking entails improving our understanding of California's biodiversity, protecting and recovering California's native species and ecosystems, and engaging participation by many partners. This talk will provide an overview of the California Biodiversity Initiative and the history of its development and will share initial efforts to implement the Initiative that are underway at California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

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CNDDB Lead Scientist Misty Nelson will present an overview of the rich history of the California Natural Diversity Database program, highlighting milestones and accomplishments from the past forty years. She will also examine some of the challenges associated with managing data for the most biodiverse state in the U.S., and will discuss upcoming changes and opportunities to keep the program relevant and regarded for decades to come.

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In recent years, wildlife ecologists have made major strides in understanding how ungulate migrations evolve, why they are important, and what causes them to decline. At the same time, storytellers have been using advances in digital photography and videography to increase interest in wildlife migrations amongst the general public and policymakers. This talk will review major science and policy developments with insights and case studies from the diverse migratory ungulates of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where Arthur Middleton and his group at UC Berkeley have done much of their work on the topic.

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In October of 2017 more than 90% of Pepperwood’s 3200-acre research reserve was burned in the Tubbs Fire, providing an incredible opportunity to leverage nearly a decade of weather, hydrology and ecology data collection to improve our empirical understanding of fire in California’s Coast Ranges. While the organization regroups to rebuild critical facilities lost in the inferno, their ecologists are inventorying the impacts of the fire and scaling up what they are learning to inform resilience strategies across California as a whole. This presentation will highlight some early findings, share how Pepperwood will serve as a living laboratory for fire recovery and habitat restoration, and highlight successful collaborations focused on building a knowledge base to support climate and fire resilience strategies in California’s inner Coast Ranges and beyond.

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To understand the status of California's at-risk aquatic species and habitat conditions during the historic 2012-2016 drought, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) responded by collecting information on stream temperature and dissolved oxygen, the status and extent of habitat fragmentation, and impacts on aquatic species. Collection of this information was critical as a baseline understanding for management actions taken during and post-drought.

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Extreme climatic events have recently impacted marine ecosystems around the world, including foundation species such as kelps. We quantify the rapid climate-driven catastrophic shift in 2014 from a previously robust kelp forest to unproductive urchin barrens in northern California. Bull kelp canopy was reduced by 93% along >350 km of coastline. Twenty years of kelp ecosystem surveys reveal the timing and magnitude of events, including mass mortalities of sea stars (2013-) and red abalone (2017-), extent of nearshore ocean warming (2014-2017), and the sea urchin population explosion (2015-). These stressors led to the unprecedented and long-lasting decline of the kelp forest and the ecosystem services is supports such as the red abalone and sea urchin fisheries. 

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