The Berkeley Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology will host the 2015 Bay Area Conservation Biology Symposium on Saturday, May 2 at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California.
The symposium started at Berkeley in 1998 under the leadership of then Chapter President Jodi Hilty, and has since become an important Bay Area tradition. The Chapter is honored to announce that, more than 15 years later, Dr. Jodi Hilty will return to the 2015 symposium as the keynote speaker. Today, Dr. Hilty is an engaged leader in the field of conservation biology and serves as the Director of the North America Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
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| The Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, site of the 16th Bay Area Conservation Biology Symposium |
This year's symposium theme is "Bridging Boundaries for Effective Conservation," which represents the Chapter's conviction that multiple disciplines and actors must be united to achieve long-term positive environmental change across a diversity of landscapes.
The symposium will offer a venue for bridging connections between conservation researchers and practitioners and between institutions in the Bay Area. Participants will attend concurrent speaker and poster sessions on interdisciplinary topics ranging from ecosystem services to climate change to human dimensions of conservation. There will be multiple opportunities to discuss science and conservation and to make connections at our catered lunch, poster session, while exploring the Lawrence Hall of Science exhibits, and at the social hour reception following the conference.
The Bay Area Conservation Biology Symposium provides a great opportunity to bring together the Bay Area conservation community to share groundbreaking research and innovative ideas. In the past, the symposium has served more than 150 participants from more than 25 Bay Area organizations and universities. A similar turnout is expected this year.
The event is sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and by the Society for Conservation Biology, thanks to a generous grant from the Chapters Committee. We will use the event to publicize SCB and recruit new global members, providing discounted event t-shirts to all members. We are excited to share photos and stories from our event at SCB's 27th International Congress for Conservation Biology and 4th European Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB-ECCB) during a poster in Montpelier, France this August.
We are currently accepting abstracts for oral and poster presentations through March 14. We welcome all conservation biologists in the Bay Area and beyond, and look forward to seeing you in May!
To read more about the symposium and for registration information, visit www.bacbs2015.com.
Berkeley Chapter president Nathan Van Schmidt, vice president Briana Abrahms, and treasurer Kaitlyn Gaynor contributed to this article.