Plenary Sessions

There will be a plenary session on each of the four mornings of the meeting. Abstracts are available here.

Sunday, 25 June: Dr. Steven E. Sanderson Steven Sanderson is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, USA. Prior to his appointment in 2001, he was Dean of Emory College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University (1978). He has studied the politics of rural poverty, biodiversity conservation and environmental change, and is a specialist in Latin America. In the mid-1980s, Dr. Sanderson served as Ford Foundation Program Officer in Brazil, where he designed and implemented the Foundation's Amazon program. As a member of the faculty of the University of Florida from 1979 to 1997, he directed the Tropical Conservation and Development Program and chaired the Department of Political Science. For the past fifteen years, he has been deeply involved with the organization of scientific cooperation on the environment, through the Social Science Research Council, the International Geosphere-Biosphere program, the National Academy of Sciences Oversight Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem and the Scientific Board of the international Resilience Alliance. A former Fulbright Scholar in Mexico, Dr. Sanderson has also held fellowships and grants from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, NASA, and the Ford, MacArthur, Rockefeller, Tinker and Heinz Foundations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Among Sanderson's scholarly publications are nine books and monographs about Latin American politics and the environment, including Agrarian Populism and the Mexican State (California 1981), The Transformation of Mexican Agriculture (Princeton 1986), and The Politics of Trade In Latin American Development (Stanford 1992). He also has written about the politics of conserving wild exploited species and is co-editor of Parks in Peril: Working with Politics and People to Save Neotropical Biodiversity (Island Press, 1998). His most recent publications include "The Future of Conservation," Foreign Affairs (September 2002) and "Poverty and Conservation: The New Century's Peasant Question?" World Development (2005).

Media coverage of environmental debates often shapes public awareness and opinions about conservation issues. While scientists play a critical role both as a resource for journalists and as a valuable information source for the public, they are often frustrated with how their work is portrayed in the press.

This plenary panel will bring together leading science journalists to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how scientific research is covered in the press, the realities of reporting on conservation issues, and elements of a successful science story and what it takes to get your message across. Panelists will provide insights into different types of media, practical advice for interacting with reporters, and tips for honing your own interview skills. This session will provide suggestions for engaging with print, broadcast, and electronic journalism professionals to achieve positive, effective results.

Please click here for more information about the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and COMPASS / SeaWeb.

Moderator: Nancy Baron Nancy Baron is the Ocean Science Outreach Director for COMPASS (Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea). She is also the lead communications trainer for the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program. In these capacities, she works with environmental scientists helping them translate their work effectively to journalists, the public, and policy makers. Nancy has an interdisciplinary Masters degree in Global Marine Studies from the University of British Columbia and a B.Sc. in Zoology and has won numerous writing awards including a National Magazine award, two Science in Society Awards from the Canadian Science Writers Association, and a Western Magazine Award.

Nick Atkinson Scientist turned science writer, Nick has a background in evolutionary biology, gaining his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Using his experience across a range of scientific disciplines, both theoretical and empirical, he tries to distill a simple, accurate story. His writing reflects a passion to communicate scientific progress to the widest possible audience. He has written news and feature stories for Science, The Scientist, Natural History Magazine, and BBC Wildlife, among others (visit www.entangled.org for more). Nick lives in Northumberland, United Kingdom, with his wife and young children.

Elizabeth Grossman Elizabeth Grossman is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She is author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics and Human Health (Island Press, May 2006), Watershed: The Undamming of America, and Adventuring Along the Lewis and Clark Trail and co-editor of Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including The Washington Post, The Nation, Salon, Orion, and Grist. She has received support for her work from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Nation Institute, and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. A native of New York City, she has a B.A. in literature from Yale University, and when not at her desk, she’s out exploring—hiking, camping, paddling, sketching, and watching birds.

Stephen Leahy Stephen Leahy has been a freelance environmental journalist for the past 12 years. He has written for dozens of publications including New Scientist, The London Sunday Times, Maclean’s Magazine, The Toronto Star, Wired News, Audubon, BBC Wildlife, and Canadian Geographic. He is also the science and environment correspondent for Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), a wire service based in Rome that covers global issues, and its Latin American affiliate, Tierramerica, based in Mexico City. Stephen writes for a variety of audiences including 20-something techno geeks at Wired, readers of South American newspapers, the scientifically-literate who love New Scientist magazine, and conservationists in North America. He is based in Brooklin (not Brooklyn), outside of Toronto, Canada.

John Nielsen John Nielsen covers environmental issues for National Public Radio (NPR). His reports air regularly on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. He also prepares documentaries for the NPR / National Geographic Radio Expeditions series. Before joining NPR in 1990, Nielsen was a Knight Fellow in the Science Journalism program at MIT. Prior to that, he worked for the Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Register, and the Salisbury (North Carolina) Evening Post. Nielsen recently published “Condor/To the Brink and Back/The Life and times of One Giant Bird” (Harper Collins). The book explores the long-running fight to save the California condor, a giant rare vulture that used to be common near his childhood home, the tiny town of Piru, California. In 2005, Nielson was awarded an AAAS Science Journalism for Excellence in Radio Reporting. He is a graduate of Stanford University, where he studied Shakespeare. Nielsen has three children and lives in Washington, D.C.

Tuesday, 27 June: Dr. James A. Estes Dr. James Estes is a Research Scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He also holds academic posts with the Biology Department, Environmental Studies Department, and Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After growing up in southern California, Jim received his bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota and doctorate from the University of Arizona. He has lived in Santa Cruz for 25 years. Jim is an internationally known expert on marine mammals and a specialist in the critical role of apex (top level) predators in the marine environment. He has conducted field research in Alaska, California, Mexico, and New Zealand. Jim's interest in predation as an ecosystem-level process began in the early 1970s, shortly after he began working with sea otters. Using the otters' fragmented distribution across the Aleutian archipelago, which resulted from a history of near-extinction and recovery, he discovered the species' keystone role in kelp forests by contrasting islands where it was abundant or rare. This work provides one of the better-known examples of how apex predators influence ecosystem function. These early findings led Jim to explore the spatial, temporal, and functional dimensions of sea otter-kelp forest interactions over the next 30 years. Jim's most recent research addresses the unanticipated collapse of sea otters and kelp forests in western Alaska. He has published more than 100 scientific articles and has served on the editorial boards for a variety of professional societies. He is Pew Fellow in marine conservation and a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

Photographs courtesy of Norm Smith

Wednesday, 28 June: Dr. Jack Dangermond Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI). Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Redlands, California, ESRI is widely recognized as the technical and market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, pioneering innovative solutions for working with spatial data on the desktop, across the enterprise, in the field, and on the Web. ESRI has the largest GIS software install base in the world with more than one million users in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide. He fostered the growth of ESRI from a small research group to an organization of over 2900 employees, known internationally for GIS software development, training, and services. Jack holds six honorary doctorates from California Polytechnic University–Pomona, State University of New York at Buffalo, University of West Hungary, City University in London, University of Redlands in California, and Ferris State University in Michigan.