Panelists

Michael Beck

Michael Beck is the San Diego Direct of Endangered Habitats League.

Paul Beier

In 1990, Paul Beier documented that young mountain lions find and use habitat corridors between mountain ranges in urban southern California. Ever since then, he has specialized in science-based design of wildlife corridors, unabashed activism for conserving them on the ground, and long-term engagement with managers to ensure best use of science in decision-making. He is Professor of Conservation Biology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA. He was President of the Society for Conservation Biology from 2011 through 2013. He co-founded a small conservation NGO that specializes in collaborative efforts to conserve corridors.

Carolyn Campbell

Carolyn Campbell has been working in environmental policy for over 30 years as an aide to elected officials, as an activist, and for the last 19 years, directing the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection. The Coalition has a specific mission of implementing habitat conservation planning in Pima County. Her experience brings unique skills to the conservation and science community. She feels that more “translators” are needed in conservation work to achieve conservation goals in a community of broad interests and needs. She believes that the future of conservation lies in the hands of local communities, where land use planning and regulations are implemented. Local officials can be held accountable and are more likely to listen and engage. Her hope is to inspire others to understand and embrace the importance of working at a local urban level.

Katie Coyne

Katie Coyne is an ecologist and urban planner who, over the last ten years, has worked on landscape, riparian, coastal, and marine ecology; and, as an environmental educator, environmental planner, and urban ecological designer. She is passionate about studying the overlap of social and ecological issues and her work aims to create better connections between people and the ecological systems around them. Katie holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Florida and dual Master’s of Science degrees at the University of Texas at Austin in Community and Regional Planning and Sustainable Design.

Prior to graduate school, she worked as an AP Environmental Science teacher; and as an ecologist carrying out field research both stateside with Mote Marine Laboratory and abroad with the U.S. Peace Corps in Fiji. Katie is an Associate Planner / Ecologist at a Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design firm called Asakura Robinson in Austin, TX. Her expertise ranges from green affordable housing and environmental justice issues to landscape ecology, green infrastructure, open space planning, and designing resilient socio-ecological systems. She is currently involved or has recently been involved in urban resiliency planning for the Houston Downtown Plan, the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport Master Plan, and Austin’s South Central Waterfront Plan; coastal resiliency planning in almost every coastal parish of Louisiana; parks and open space planning for the Landa Park Master Plan in New Braunfels and the Uplands Tract in Sunset Valley; green infrastructure planning throughout Texas and in New Orleans; neighborhood planning in the Homewood Neighborhood of Pittsburgh; and, with ecotourism planning in Lower Richland County, South Carolina.

In Katie’s free time she serves on the board of directors for the Texas Riparian Association and focuses on urban riparian systems, and on the board of Equality Texas, the state’s largest LGBTQ lobbying and advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring equality for ALL Texans (#yallmeansall).

Liz Crosson

Liz Crosson serves Mayor Eric Garcetti's Sustainability Team as the Water Policy Advisor. She works with city departments and outside stakeholders to achieve the ambitious local water goals set forth in the Sustainable City pLAn, including reducing per capita water use by 20% by 2017 and locally sourcing 50% of L.A.'s water supply by 2035. She previously spent 5 years as the Executive Director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper where she ​​led the organization's efforts to protect, conserve and restore Los Angeles' waterways through advocacy, community education and litigation. She previously worked as an associate attorney with Lawyers for Clean Water, Inc. where she represented non-profit organizations in water pollution enforcement actions. Liz has an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley where she studied Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. She also has an M.S. in Biology/Environmental Education and a J.D. from Lewis and Clark Law School with an emphasis in environmental law.

Deborah Fowler

Deborah Fowler has worked in nature parks for over 15 years starting in N.C. State Parks. She joined Wake County Parks, Recreation and Open Space in 2003 and has performed a myriad of responsibilities in her tenure: natural and cultural resource management projects; park planning, operations, and maintenance; environmental and outdoor recreational programs; volunteer supervision, including many citizen science projects.

She is currently the Open Space Manager and responsible for design/construction, operations/maintenance of three new nature preserves (Robertson Millpond Preserve opened 2015, future Turnipseed Nature Preserve opening fall 2017, and Procter Farm Preserve to open in 2019). She also manages 6300+ acres of open space across Wake County. She partners with local, state, federal government, non-profit agencies and universities to manage rare species, discourage invasive plants, foster quality habitats, and lead prescribed burns as certified Burn Boss for a variety of wildlife.

In her free time, Deborah enjoys being outdoors, sharing plant and wildlife observations, and discussing the interconnectedness of systems. She enjoys knitting, biking to breweries, and spending time with family and friends.

Stanley Gehrt

Stanley Gehrt is Professor and Wildlife Extension Specialist at The Ohio State University.

Mark Hostetler

Dr. Mark Hostetler is a Professor, Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation, University of Florida (UF). With over twenty years of experience in urban wildlife and green development issues, Dr. Hostetler conducts research and outreach on how urban landscapes could be designed and managed, from small to large scales, to conserve biodiversity. Partnering with policy makers, city/county planners, environmental consultants, and developers, he leads efforts to establish model communities that incorporate conservation design and management strategies that enhance urban biodiversity and minimize development impacts on nearby natural areas. Dr. Hostetler co-founded UF’s Program for Resource Efficient Communities (PREC) and collaborates with an interdisciplinary team of scientists and graduate students to foster green development projects nationally and internationally. He serves on the advisory board of URBIO, which is a scientific network for education and research that promotes urban biodiversity across the globe. He is the author of The Green Leap: Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development.

Megan Jennings

Megan Jennings is a conservation ecologist with San Diego State University's Institute for Ecological Monitoring and Management.

Liza Lehrer

I am an urban wildlife ecologist who has been working in the region for >10 years. I became enamored with urban wildlife early in my career when witnessing the return of coyotes and other mesocarnivores to the city in the early 2000s. Since then, I have focused my work on first understanding how wildlife are using and navigating urban areas, and more recently, connecting that information and natural awareness to Chicago’s residents and to urban planning. Chicago, as well as many other cities, is on the precipice of more broad-scale wildlife friendly design and open space planning, due in part to a peak in awareness and momentum, and due to an accumulation of relevant data from long-term studies. It is my hope that we will see an increased emphasis on environmental considerations for all urban planning and development in the future, not just in Chicago, but across all metropolitan areas. Broad scale, coordinated studies (e.g., UWIN, UrBioNet) are taking steps toward that goal, as well as conferences and symposia like these.

Seth Magle

I am an urban wildlife ecologist, working in Chicago for almost 8 years. I’ve been interested in conserving and managing urban wildlife at a broad scale since my undergraduate education, which I began with a series of studies of urban prairie dogs in the Denver area. These days I am based in Chicago but I also coordinate a nationwide network for urban wildlife research. Chicago, to me, is a unique and valuable case study in what can be done in large urban areas through the power of collaboration. It’s inspiring how many people from different fields and institutions are able to work together to understand, manage, and appreciate urban species.

Kristeen Penrod

Kristeen Penrod is the Director of Science & Collaboration for Connected Wildlands (SC Wildlands). SC Wildlands’ mission is to protect and restore systems of connected wildlands that support native wildlife and the systems upon which they rely. Kristeen got her start in linkage conservation planning by coordinating California’s statewide Missing Linkages conference in November of 2000. This groundbreaking conference, and the report it spawned (Penrod et al. 2001. Missing Linkages: Restoring Connectivity to the California Landscape.), helped bring landscape connectivity into the forefront of conservation thinking in the state. That same year, she founded SC Wildlands. SC Wildlands has collaborated on several projects focused on connectivity conservation, such as the South Coast Missing Linkages Project, Connectivity Planning for Selected Focal Species in the Carrizo Plain, California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project, A Linkage Network for the California Deserts, and Critical Linkages: Bay Area & Beyond. Kristeen coauthored a chapter on corridors and connectivity (Beier et al. 2006) in Connectivity Conservation, Cambridge University Press. She also served as an Advisor to the Western Governors Association on the Transportation Committee for their Wildlife Corridors Initiative and coauthored the report to the Governors, which was approved in 2008.

Niamh Quinn

Niamh Quinn is the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Human-Wildlife Interactions Advisor. She facilitates, coordinates and establishes leadership, relationships and information transfer between stakeholders who have interests in research and the applied management of urban wildlife. She is extremely interested in the management of commensal rodents and the management of human-coyote conflicts in Southern California.

Sherry Ruther

Sherry Ruther is a wildlife biologist who for nearly 30 years has been integrating conservation science into land use planning and public policy. Born of first-hand experiences, she strongly believes that conservation of natural resources in urban environs is best achieved when biologists are educated about and directly participate in local land planning and development processes. Effective conservation outcomes are highly dependent upon the ability to express scientific data and principles in ways that are relevant and useful to a local jurisdiction’s planning, development, or policy undertaking. Urban environments, largely under the control of local jurisdictions, are part of the interstitial spaces that lie between blocks of public land, our bastions of wildlife habitat. Public lands, however, are largely de facto biogeographic islands that either are or potentially will be susceptible to the ills of isolation. But plying conservation through the land use and development authorities reserved to local jurisdictions is an important counterpoint to public lands isolation and serves to create a more biologically interconnected landscape.

Andy Shrader

I am a UCLA MFA-trained screenwriter who became increasingly obsessed with the changing climate and widespread environmental degradation, kept writing screenplays about saving the world, and finally decided he needed to stop working toward contributing to “bread and circuses” and work instead toward creating an ecological civilization under an increasingly short timeframe.

My work as an environmental policy advisor to a member of the city council in the most influential city in the world has given me a platform for which I am continuously grateful and I do my best to maximize its effectiveness. Together, Councilmember Paul Koretz and I have banned plastic bags, overhauled the city’s commercial waste hauling system, established a wildlife corridors policy in the Hollywood Hills, initiated an LA biodiversity index, inserted native plant requirements into the Department of Water & Power’s turf removal rebate guidelines, instituted the city’s Good Food Purchasing Policy, and were instrumental in helping move the city off of coal power and close down the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant.

My overall vision is to be a vital force in creating a resilient, regenerative city of the future where human beings contribute in their daily habits to the overall health and well-being of the planet and all its inhabitants, both flora and fauna.

Heather Swanson

Dr. Heather Swanson is a Senior Wildlife Ecologist with the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks Department in Boulder, Colorado. In this position, she supervises a wildlife program that works to protect, enhance and study native wildlife populations on Open Space and Mountain Parks, while working with the local community to maintain public enjoyment of the land. Throughout her career, she has worked to maintain and restore natural ecosystems and native wildlife communities directly adjacent to a large metropolitan area. Her interests specifically focus on using the latest scientific information to fostering public appreciation and support for functioning natural landscapes to allow balance between recreational opportunities and natural systems protection. Due to the close proximity of high quality wildlife habitat to the urban areas of Boulder, she also works with urban wildlife staff to foster public understanding of wildlife, and increase the opportunity for residents to coexist with wildlife in the urban area and on adjacent open spaces. She feels that in the Western United States, preservation of thriving wildlife populations and ecosystems will require robust partnerships between urban communities and local land managers. These will be necessary to address issues that arise from increasing population pressure on public lands and the resulting challenges to maintaining healthy, functioning ecosystems with sufficient resilience to respond to changing conditions.

Jan Thompson

Jan Thompson is Professor in the department of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State University in Ames, IA. She teaches, conducts research, and has published on restoration ecology, urban ecology and urban biodiversity conservation. She is interested in identifying and understanding the elements that lead to success for conservation of biological diversity in rapidly growing and urbanizing regions. She co-leads a graduate-level case study course focused on “Conservation of Biodiversity in Urban Regions” with George Hess (North Carolina State University) and Troy Bowman (Alabama A & M).

Susan Wynn

Susan Wynn is a Fish and Wildlife Biologist in the Carlsbad Fish and Wildlife Office in San Diego County, California. She has worked for the agency for 25 years implementing the federal Endangered Species Act. She has worked on regional planning with the jurisdictions in San Diego County for most of her career, both in the development and implementation of their plans. Her biggest goal/dream for the region is to build out the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge and to assist in the recovery of the species that reside there.

Image Credits

George Hess