CDFW Conservation Lecture Series Archive

The brown marmorated stink bug was introduced to the United States from Asia in the 1990s. The ability of the insect to hitchhike in vehicles and planes has allowed it to spread rapidly to new areas. Wherever the insect takes up residence, it causes severe crop and garden losses and becomes a nuisance to people. This insect has a propensity for migrating seasonally into homes and offices where large numbers aggregate to seek favorable overwintering sites. The invasive insect was first trapped in California in 2005, although its current establishment and distribution are not clear.

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The story of conservation of the Bay checkerspot butterfly over three decades illustrates many of the challenges posed by a novel 21st century environment. The butterfly is among the most well-studied natural populations in the world, and complex relationships between weather, topoclimate, phenology, and population dynamics have been untangled. The butterfly in its nutrient-poor serpentine grassland habitat has become a "poster child" for impacts of atmospheric nitrogen deposition on biodiversity, and the necessity of cattle grazing for maintaining habitat in the face of annual grass invasions. The newly adopted (2013) Santa Clara Valley HCP/NCCP promises to conserve and manage the remaining habitat. The broader implications of nitrogen deposition on California biodiversity will also be discussed. 

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The land clearing and draining industriousness of the early European settlers largely erased riparian wetlands and multi-threaded channels from the California landscape, as well as from our collective consciousness. Incised, simplified channels are the result of those efforts and what we tend to manage our waterways to be. The importance of multi-threaded channels for ecosystem function and biotic productivity is beginning to be understood and taken into account in restoration design. However, the preference for single-thread regime channels with sediment transport continuity runs deep in the stream restoration community. Dr. Brian Cluer will present the recently developed stream evolution model (SEM) (Cluer and Thorne 2014), which describes the complex habitat and ecosystem benefits associated with various channel types and their stages of evolution. The SEM framework shows that there are significant differences in these habitat and ecosystem values between incised, floodplain-connected, and multi-threaded streams. The implications for stream conservation and eco-hydrologic restoration will be explored. A case study on the transition from incised channel to multi-threaded wetland channel complex, and the resulting change in ecosystem benefits observed, will be presented by Lauren Hammack. The story takes place in Willow Creek, a tributary to the lower Russian River and a high-priority watershed for Coho salmon recovery and the Russian River Coho Salmon Captive Broodstock Program. The land use history of Willow Creek watershed, the channel management practices, and the restoration decision-making challenges are representative of situations throughout California. 

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Instream structures such as wood jams, living vegetation, beaver dams, certain geomorphic features and other obstacles that slow the downstream movement of water and sediment are essential to the restoration of streams. In particular, such ecologically functional dams or obstructions can accelerate the development of "stage zero" channels. The stage zero channel (sensu Cluer and Thorne 2013) is increasingly recognized as having intrinsic high value because of the multiple and synergistic ecosystem goods and services that such systems provide. Stage zero channels have well connected floodplains with elevated water tables, spatially variable hydrologic regimes and structurally complex aquatic and riparian habitat. As such, they provide incredibly valuable habitat for a suite of terrestrial and aquatic taxa, including several Pacific salmon species that are in decline. In this presentation, Dr. Pollock will provide an overview of how ecologically functional dams can be built to create zero order channels, the features and types of stage zero channels, where in the landscape they are likely to be found, and how they evolve under natural conditions. Dr. Pollock will compare the structure and function of stage zero channels to more traditional channel restoration targets. Dr. Pollock concludes that new approaches to stream restoration are needed that take into account society’s economic and ecological imperatives to create resilient, structurally complex and dynamic systems, and that the spatial scale of restorative actions should be expanded where possible to better recognize and integrate the interdependent nature of longitudinal, lateral and vertical linkages in stream systems. 

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The San Joaquin kit fox was added to the original endangered species list in 1967. After almost 50 years, it still remains listed with no prospects in sight of being delisted. Indeed, the species likely has steadily declined since listing and continues to decline today. In this presentation, Dr. Cypher will (1) provide an overview of the biology and ecology of the San Joaquin kit fox, (2) discuss its current conservation status and continuing threats, (3) detail recent research and conservation efforts, and (4) describe future conservation needs and challenges. And when possible, Dr. Cypher will offer suggestions for actions and measures the CDFW might consider implementing to facilitate kit fox conservation efforts.

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The importance of evaluating restoration projects is now broadly accepted, though agreement on metrics and monitoring approaches is elusive. Unless being used to test specific hypotheses about the project, generic geomorphic, hydrologic, and biological monitoring programs are unlikely to answer questions about restoration success. In this talk I review and critique common approaches to river restoration and highlight our own research in: 1) quantifying the historical range of variability in geomorphic processes and forms as a context for channel and wetland restoration in Rocky Mountain National Park and 2) using prey availability as an intermediate metric linking habitat alteration and species-specific goals on the lower Colorado River. 

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The American badger (Taxidea taxus) is a Species of Special Concern in California. Funded by a grant from the CDFW Resource Assessment Program (RAP) Dr. Jessie Quinn studied the population distribution, movement behavior, and pathogen and rodenticide exposure in collaboration with the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center, with support from the OSPR Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center. She completed a Species Status Report for the American badger for CDFW in 2009, and more recently completed a book chapter on pathogens and parasites in American badgers that will be included in the upcoming text Badgers of the World. Dr. Quinn's lecture will discuss the natural history of the species in California, potential threats to populations, and results of her research. 

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This lecture focused on three topics: 1) Designing with a purpose - linking quantitative goals, objectives, metrics, and models into the design process; 2) biological monitoring - integration of the salmonid habitat mapping and juvenile utilization into design effectiveness; and 3) physical monitoring - learning from geomorphic process of fluvial evolution between the interaction of wood and gravel. 

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Obtaining crucial data on wild species can be extremely challenging, and a variety of problems may prevent finding cryptic animals in diverse environments. The unparalleled abilities of canine olfaction offers a way to increase proficiency in non-invasively collecting information on endangered, rare and hard to find species and detect and remove threats to wildlife. More than 80 publications detail how canines have been employed to locate wildlife sign, live animals, and plants, and in the past two decades alone the use of trained dogs as a survey tool has increased dramatically. At the forefront of the conservation dog field, Working Dogs for Conservation (WDC) has been selecting, training and deploying dogs that 'live to work’ for projects worldwide, using and refining current methods and developing new approaches to address present and future challenges. Collaborating with agencies, NGOs, researchers, students and grassroots community groups since 2000, WDC dog-biologist teams have detected nearly 40 species in 18 states and 16 countries. Dog-collected data has enabled a host of incredible conservation achievements ranging from developing eradication techniques for a highly invasive weed in Montana to determining the whereabouts of the world’s most endangered primate - the Cross River gorilla - in West Africa to identifying occupied San Joaquin kit fox habitat where partners armed with these survey results leveraged over $2.5M for its purchase and permanent protection in California. 

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Transformative events shaping human histories, perceptions, and modalities can be considered to be of the Black Swan variety. Black Swans, in this context, are unanticipated events with significant impact, yet in hindsight appear perfectly predictable. Flood events and ensuing social-ecological transformations are an archetype Black Swan. In this paper, we illustrate how a Black Swan event transformed not only a riverine floodplain, but also initiated a paradigm shift in thinking and approach to riverine floodplain restoration. In 1986, a relatively routine levee failure along the banks of the Cosumnes River led to the establishment of an "accidental" forest. The forest was not the surprise, rather it was the shift in thinking. In retrospect, of course, it was perfectly predictable that following the levee failure, floodplain restoration approaches would focus on initiating hydroecological processes, rather than on mimicking biological composition and pattern. Subsequently, the transformation in thinking has led to a scientific focus on ecological effects of hydrological process, including intentional levee breaching and promotion of flooded floodplains. We explore the role of Black Swans at the interface of ecosystem disturbance and human reaction within this emergent paradigm with a new focus on the use of setback levees and levee breaching to promote process-based restoration of Central Valley floodplains for multiple social-ecological benefits. 

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