Workshops SCCS-NY 2020

Field conservation projects often require months of planning, research, and preliminary work—but even the best-laid plans often go awry. Faulty equipment, inclement weather, and travel changes due to global pandemics can present unique hurdles to even the most experienced conservationists. Join us for an in-depth and interactive discussion led by National Geographic Explorers (grant recipients) and Wildlife Conservation Society Graduate Scholars about adapting to change in the field, from creating flexible project plans and budgets, to using project management tools to keep your team on track, and everything in between.

This workshop is intended for early-career or less-experienced conservation scientists who may be gearing up to lead their first field project.

Organizers: Arslan Ahmad, Early Career Grants - National Geographic Society; Jill Spear, Conservation & Research Grants - National Geographic Society; Kate Mastro, Graduate Scholarship Program - Wildlife Conservation Society

The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s Half-Earth Map, half-earthproject.org/maps, is designed as a data-driven conservation decision-making tool. The map also presents a rich opportunity for diverse learners to engage with real-world data and develop map-based interpretation skills in the context of a transcendent call to save our planet’s biodiversity.

Participants will explore multiple resources—including the digital map—that can be used to support conservation decision-making and stewardship involving diverse stakeholders such as communities most directly affected by local and regional land use. In addition to the online Half-Earth Map, a hands-on mapping design challenge, guided inquiries, and other data have been developed or curated to foster engagement, understanding and learning. Some of the materials have been successfully field-tested with students at the high school and college level as well as workshopped with the general public.

Learning goals include: understanding the utility of biodiversity, protected areas, and human impact layers for map-based conservation-decision support; ability to make a structured case to support complex, multi-stakeholder land-use decisions, and; gain an appreciation of equity and inclusion benefits of authentic team-based work.

Organizers: Dennis Liu and Amanda Briody, E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation; Scott Rinnan, Half-Earth Project & Yale University, Global Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation

Conservation biologists are increasingly turning to the past for lessons to guide the future. In this workshop, an interdisciplinary team of researchers representing historical and paleo ecology, museum science, zoology, and botany will share how they have worked with practitioners to incorporate temporal datasets ranging from decades to thousands of years in solving conservation problems.

The workshop will include a brief lecture that introduces participants to the field of conservation paleobiology and its direct applications for both species-specific and ecosystem-level conservation goals. We will then work through an interactive set of case studies navigating commonly used databases (e.g., Neotoma) for a tropical protected area and an urban ecology example, spanning the range of human-modified landscapes in conservation. Lastly, we will break out into groups to brainstorm what temporal datasets could be added to the participant’s ongoing research, yielding new research directions and collaborations. Throughout, we will discuss how a temporal approach can enhance stakeholder engagement to be more inclusive of diverse voices.

Our goals are for participants to: 1) appreciate the utility of temporal data; 2) identify and navigate sources of temporal data not typically used in conservation; and 3) apply this new “toolbox” to their own research projects.

Organizers: Alexis Mychajliw, Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology & Microbiome Research, University of Oklahoma; Mairin Balisi, Department of Rancho La Brea, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Libby Ellwood, Department of Rancho La Brea, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Jessie George, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles

The ability to raise funds to undertake conservation and research projects is a skill that many conservationists are likely to gain in their careers. In 2019, the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) received c.350 applications for small grant projects. Competition for funding was tough—we funded 19 projects worth c.$350,000—but many applicants would have had a greater chance of success had they followed our application guidelines and avoided common proposal writing errors.

Through the use of online tools, this interactive session will enable participants to 1) interact with donors and CLP grantees and understand what makes applications successful (panel discussion and Q&A); 2) learn how to succinctly describe their project to engage potential donors (exercise in pairs) and 3) put themselves in the shoes of a donor by reviewing parts of a CLP proposal (group quiz-style activity which may requires some re-workshop reading).

By the end of this short workshop, we hope that participants will be able to take a constructive view of their own fundraising approaches, benefit from sharing knowledge with their peers, and experience what it’s like being on the other side of the grant application process.

Organizers: Stuart Paterson, CLP-Fauna & Flora International; Christina Imrich, CLP-Wildlife Conservation Society; Leala Rosen, CLP-Wildlife Conservation Society; Sherilyn Bos, CLP-BirdLife International; Henry Rees, CLP-Fauna & Flora International; Kate Tointon, CLP-Fauna & Flora International

Two 2019 UN reports stated that biodiversity was declining rapidly and that fundamental societal change was needed to avert further decline and enable recovery. The reports are unprecedented in pointing to causes rather than symptoms. UN agencies cannot generate such changes; only those committed to the natural world can do so by creating and executing sound political strategies.

This workshop focuses on developing such strategies. It will be organized in two parts: developing a strategy for direct protection and developing a strategy to address causes. Workshop participants will select a goal in each case to be the subject of strategy development and by addressing a series of questions. Participants will receive the questions prior to the workshop; they identify the tasks that must be accomplished to generate the political support to achieve the goal.

Neither the Millennium goals or Aichi targets were realized. How can that be changed? Even some politically sophisticated conservationists accept existing trends (e.g. growing human conversion of the world into commodities) and power relationships, which are incompatible with biodiversity recovery.

The workshop aims to provide participants experience in developing sound strategies for mobilizing resources and bringing them to bear on decision makers.

Organizer: David Johns, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Portland State University

The workshop goal is to provide theoretical and practical basis of Photovoice, a powerful method to explore and generate solutions for primate conservation issues.

In this methodology, adults, youngsters and/or children take pictures of several scenarios or situations around a specific topic to structure a dialogue that can serve to first diagnose environmental problems of a certain context and then together advance with socio-environmental action.

Hence, as the community listens and reacts to the participants’ perspectives, this can guide them to find jointly solutions that benefit both primate and non-primate scenarios. Although this technique has widely been applied to several disciplines and sociocultural and environmental situations, the facilitators of this workshop will share their experience with primate conservation education in several schools from Southeast Mexico. Therefore, Photovoice is presented as a participatory, useful and educational technique that also serves as a connection tool with potential for linking students, adults and other stakeholders from the community (NGOs, politicians, etc.), based on cross-cultural and gender-center perspectives.

Organizer: Montserrat Franquesa-Soler, Postdoc at IIES-UNAM

Species distribution modeling (SDM) is an important tool for conservation scientists, as it enables us to estimate present species range limits and make predictions about ranges for other areas and time periods.

Advances in model-building and evaluation theory are common in the ecology and evolution literature. However, most cutting-edge methods are only accessible to those scientists who can read and write computer code. This results in a ‘barrier to use’ for many potential users. The Wallace ecological modeling application, implemented in the R programming language as the CRAN package "wallace", provides a graphical user interface allowing any user to implement advanced SDM methods. Additionally, Wallace provides extensive guidance text to help both new and experienced users learn best practices, as well as references key papers from the literature for further investigation. Each model-building session can be exported as a fully documented R Markdown script file, to ensure reproducibility, ease of reporting, and for more advanced users, an easily modifiable code.

In this workshop, we will go through the basics of SDM using Wallace. We will demonstrate the key features of the software and show applications to conservation science.

Organizers: Matthew Aiello-Lammens, Pace University; Pete Galante, AMNH; Erica Johnson, City College of New York, CUNY; Andrea Paz, City College of New York, CUNY; Gonzalo Pinilla-Buitrago, City College of New York, CUNY

The concept of metapopulations holds pivotal significance in ecology and conservation. Species which occur in a metapopulation face particular issues related to environmental impacts which are easy to evaluate and help design effective management and conservation strategies. We aim to understand metapopulation dynamics of amphibians and reptiles in human modified landscapes (such as those containing fragmented, degraded, urbanized habitats, etc.) to prevent local extinctions.

The workshop includes, but is not limited to, topics such as rapid habitat quantification tools, space/habitat use, dispersal, colonization, survival strategies, conservation genetics (gene flow, genetic erosion), pathogens/diseases and conservation and management planning of metapopulations of endemic, data deficient and threatened species of herpetofauna.

The workshop will be useful for graduate and post-graduate students, researchers, conservation planners and wildlife planners. The workshop will consist of presentations by experts and a facilitated group discussion. The participants will be encouraged to get involved in the group discussion to recognize elements that need to be considered in metapopulation management. Existing research, conservation and management tools will be reviewed and selection/ suggestion of best/workable tools will be identified.

A network of students, experts and planners will be established, through Facebook or as suggested during the workshop, to disseminate information and share ideas, and publication of results of the discussion and contributed talks/ papers.

Organizer: Muhammad Rais, Assistant Professor Wildlife Management, Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan; Member: Conservation Planning Specialist Group, Species Survival Commission, Commission on Ecosystem Management; Herpetologists' league, USA; Zoological Society of Pakistan

This session will be an opportunity for participants to reflect on their own academic and work history while exploring future directions, developing skills in career planning, networking, and self-promotion, and gaining a toolset for creating and holding space for themselves in the workplace.

Interested in industry? Aching for academia? Never gonna give up non-profits? Pretty sure you're perfect for policy? Wooed by science writing? Then bring your curious self to our workshop where we'll do hands-on self-assessment activities, discuss varied options in conservation career pathways, and share in small-groups about the challenges and rewards of the work we aspire to do.

And don't forget: the more, the merrier! We invite senior scientists and practitioners to speak about their experiences, post-docs and graduate students to group-share their goals, and undergraduates & high schoolers to discuss their developing ideas. All you need is a notebook, pen, and your creative mind – group activities, games, worksheets, and (virtual) cookies are on us.

Organizers: Alex Moore, Mary Blair, Nadav Gazit, Eleanor Sterling, AMNH; Christian Rivera, University of Florida