Climate Change Symposium for Public Lands

Contact: Roy Stearns, State Parks, 916.654-7538/799.1036 rstea@parks.ca.gov
Susan Gluss, media relations director, 510.642.6936 sgluss@law.berkeley.edu

Not Open to Public – Reporters Invited to attend all Sessions

Over the next several years, decisions will be made on how to spend hundreds of millions of public and private dollars on the acquisition and restoration of conservation lands in California.  It’s vital that those decisions be based on the best available scientific data concerning the impact of climate change on critical habitats and species.  This event will help provide the scientific context for public lands policy recommendations.

Who: California State Parks and Berkeley Law School’s California Center for Environmental Law and Policy (CCELP), with the assistance of the Resources Legacy Fund and The Nature Conservancy, are the joint sponsors of this event.

What: Symposium on Climate Change and Public Conservation Lands Management

When: Thursday, November 15, 2007, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., reception to follow.

Where: Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley (510) 848-7800. Parking: Sather Gate Public Garage, 2450 Durant Ave (50% off vouchers available at BCC desk).

Speakers include: Ruth Coleman, director, California State Parks; Will Travis, executive director, San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission; Richard Frank, executive director, CCELP; Craig Moritz, Ph.D., director, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, U.C. Berkeley; Sam Schuchat, executive director, State Coastal Conservancy; Victoria Sork, chair and professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA; and, Lydia Ries, Ph.D., research scientist, U.C. Santa Barbara.

Symposium attendees—more than 140 leading policymakers, academics, public land managers, land trust leaders, conservationists and interested donors—will help formulate actionable policy recommendations on how public land managers should modify their management strategies, acquisition priorities, and restoration practices, based on the expected effects of climate change on species and habitats.

The end result of these deliberations will be a set of policy recommendations for government leaders, public lands managers, and philanthropic donors who play a role in the acquisition and restoration of public conservation lands.  California State Parks and the California Center for Environmental Law & Policy will publish the group’s conclusions and policy recommendations by early 2008.