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Bridging the Gap: Connecting People, Nature, & Climate

The greatest challenge to conservation science today is addressing gaps in information, understanding, and on-the-ground implementation. These gaps require bridging our efforts across multiple scales through inter-disciplinary study and effective practice. By sharing our conservation experience we can benefit from information about how effective our practices are, advance our understanding, and foster useful lines of inquiry.

We are facing many environmental and social challenges that have common underpinnings and mutually desirable outcomes, justifying a clear need to integrate biological, physical, and social sciences into the environmental problem solving process. Change is coming that will affect our climate, population, and natural capital. Fostering a stronger connection between conservation science and practice that addresses people, nature, and climate will improve the utility of our science in addressing the forecasted changes.

North America in particular will see changes that are likely to influence biodiversity at multiple scales, from large migratory routes to extirpation of locally adapted species. Our fresh water supplies will be stretched to accommodate population growth and infrastructure development, and may likely become seasonally less predictable. Changes such as these have implications for human communities, protected areas, working landscapes, and functioning ecosystem.

Developing conservation strategies to cope with our changing planet is arguably the greatest challenge facing the world and its biodiversity. Convening at NACCB 2012 will allow us to pool our collective experience and expertise in order to bridge knowledge and implementation gaps that impede our progress in conservation.