Day one at the Society for Conservation Biology annual meeting
Just finishing a very long, exhilarating, fascinating day at the premier yearly gathering of the tribe of scientists dedicated to figuring out how to save what we’ve got left, and how to restore what we’ve lost. Too tired at this point for a detailed post, but the word from Chattanooga (last year’s meeting was in South Africa; next year, it’s Beijing) is that the climate change and biodiversity crises are definitely converging (you don’t want to know what rising sea levels with mean for the last tigers of Sumatra’s mangrove coast); geographic information system (GIS) mapping is clearly becoming a revolutionary tool for environmental planning, communication, and advocacy; and the pluck, courage, ingenuity, and nerdy goodness of this bunch almost make you forget the melancholy echo of phrases like “retreat to refugia,” “extinction rates,” “the value of z,” and “ecosystem loss and isolation.”
Photograph of the Chattanooga Aquarium by Leo Reynolds / Creative Common
