Plenary Speakers

George Divoky (Keynote Speaker)

Being “close to the edge” may not be obvious, until you cross that edge, or…worst case…fall off of it!

When George Divoky began his study of seabirds in arctic Alaska in 1975, he had little appreciation for how close his study site was to a number of important physical and biological edges. Nor could he have predicted the drastic changes that would occur at those edges over more than three decades as a result of a rapidly changing climate.

Divoky conducts annual observations of the seabirds breeding on Cooper Island in the Arctic Ocean, 25 miles from Point Barrow, Alaska. In the late 20th Century, he found decadal trends in breeding phenology and populations as snow and ice responded to slowly increasing temperatures.

As the pace of climate change increased, ecosystem alterations became more rapid and catastrophic. Arctic pack ice retreats at an increasing rate. Summer storms are more intense. Coastal erosion threatens the study colony. Unprecedented changes in sea ice and sea surface temperatures are causing rapid changes in the distribution and numbers of the seabirds’ prey, as well as their predators and competitors.

These modifications in distribution are causing the “arctic biodiversity paradox.” At a time of concern for decreasing biodiversity in lower latitudes, extreme northern ecosystems are gaining diversity as subarctic species expand northward. Arctic species, especially those dependent on pack ice, become stranded south of their normal ranges. Polar bears that were rare on Divoky’s study island in the past are now annual visitors in late summer — and a real threat to both seabirds and researchers!

George Divoky will share his observations and experiences of more than 30 years at Cooper Island. Together, we’ll examine how climate-driven modifications of “edges” might affect species and ecosystems throughout North America.

It’s 2009…do you know how close to the edge your natural areas are?

Biography

George Divoky has studied seabirds in Alaska since 1970 when, as a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution, he participated in the Coast Guard’s survey of the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Prudhoe Bay, prior to the development of that oilfield. Since then he has been involved in Alaskan seabird studies relating to a diverse group of conservation issues including the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act, oil and gas exploration of the outer continental shelf, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and regional climate change. He has maintained a continuing study of a seabird colony at Cooper Island, Alaska, since 1975. The study is one of the longest longitudinal bird studies in North America or the Arctic and its findings on the consequences of snow and pack ice reductions provide some of the best examples of the biological response to climate change.

Divoky’s research was featured in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine entitled “George Divoky’s Planet,” in the Scientific American Frontiers program “Hot Times in Alaska” and on ABC Nightly News and Nightline. He was a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman. The website of Divoky’s nonprofit organization, Friends of Cooper Island provides background and regular updates on his research and outreach programs.

Divoky is a native of Cleveland, Ohio and received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in zoology from Michigan State University. He obtained his doctorate in biology from the University of Alaska where he now holds a position of Research Associate at the Institute of Arctic Biology. He is one of the founders of the Pacific Seabird Group (PSG), an international society of professional ornithologists and conservationists studying and protecting the marine birds of the Pacific Basin. He received PSG’s Special Achievement Award in 1998. Outside of the field season he resides in Seattle where he has an 18-year-old son.

Robert Michael Pyle (Opening Plenary Session)

Robert Michael Pyle with Marsha, his butterfly net. Photo by Eddie Rivers.

Robert Michael Pyle is a noted and well-traveled nature writer, storyteller, lepidopterist, and conservation biologist. As our featured Opening Plenary speaker, Pyle will explore “Natural Areas as Antidote to the Extinction of Experience”:

“When our immediate and nearby environs become depleted of the elements of diversity, our contact suffers for it. This impoverishment of experience leads to a populace that is distanced, therefore alienated from, and ultimately apathetic about wild plants, animals, and their habitats. From such a separation comes a lack of engagement, pointing in turn toward further losses. This cycle of loss, which I call “the extinction of experience,” can have serious social and biological consequences. For one, people become satisfied or complacent with the diminished baseline, knowing not what they have lost. For another, the sort of psychological alchemy that makes naturalists and conservationists shuts down. Nothing works better to resist the extinction of experience than natural areas. However, that applies only if, in their conservation and management, such places continue to furnish personal engagement with diversity on the part of ordinary people as well as ecologists. This dual burden on the land—to conserve the biota while perpetuating public contact—sets up an interesting and challenging management conundrum. Drawing upon my own experience in the field and from my writing, I will paint my ideas of place-based conservation, intimacy with nature, and the roles they both should play in modern life.”

Biography

Robert Michael Pyle's undergraduate degree from the University of Washington is perhaps the only one ever awarded in the field of "nature perception and protection." His master's in "nature interpretation" was followed by a doctorate in "ecology and environmental studies" from Yale University. Pyle founded the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and he's received the Distinguished Service Award from The Society for Conservation Biology. A full-time writer and independent biologist, Pyle's fifteen books include Wintergreen (winner of the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing), Where Bigfoot Walks (subject of a Guggenheim Fellowship), and Walking the High Ridge, as well as The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies, Butterflies of Cascadia and several other standard butterfly works. His most recent book, Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place, won the 2007 National Outdoor Book Award for natural history literature and was a finalist for the Orion and Washington Book Awards. Pyle lives along a tributary of the Lower Columbia River in southwest Washington with his wife, botanist Thea Linnaea Pyle. He has recently completed the first Butterfly Big Year for a new book.

Pat Pringle (Opening Plenary Session)

Photo by Leslie Pringle.

Pat will present an overview of the natural history of Washington State through geologic time using the record of rock and sediment environments to illuminate the processes that built and altered the region. World-class geologic sites in the Pacific Northwest preserve natural history in remarkable detail, and some of the geologic events occurred at mind-boggling scales.

Geologic processes provide the underpinnings for today’s natural systems, and their record demonstrates how integrated Pacific Northwest natural history is to changing geology and climate through time as plates and terranes moved from tropical latitudes to the north. The region’s climates also changed because of shifting Earth-sun relationships, tectonic plate movements and ocean basin changes and currents, volcanism, meteor impacts, and through the development and evolution of Earth’s life forms and ecosystems.

The precise dating of regional geologic events, and the exposure of many details about how subduction, accretion, and other plate tectonic processes have built Pacific Northwest landscapes are mainly products of recent research. Pat has been at the center of this growing field of knowledge. He’ll discuss this changing geologic record of climate and plant life, and lead us to the present with an overview of the diversity of Washington state flora and fauna.

Biography

Pat Pringle is associate professor of Earth Science at Centralia College, Washington. Pat was a research geologist at the Washington Department of Natural Resources Division of Geology from 1990-2005. He was on the volcanic hazards team at the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) from 1982 to 1990, where he studied Mount St. Helens post-1980 eruptive events and geomorphic changes, worked on volcanic hazard assessments of Mount Hood and Mount Rainier, and conducted studies of the history of debris flows in Grand Canyon National Park. He was public information officer at CVO (1986-1987) during the October 1986 “dome building eruption.”

Pat is fascinated by volcanic processes and the history of the Cascade Range. He uses radiocarbon dating, tree rings, and other techniques to compile recent geologic history, including that of volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, and debris flows. He is the author of Roadside Geology of Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and Vicinity and Roadside Geology of Mount Rainier National Park and Vicinity. He has authored or co-authored papers in Science, Northwest Science, Geology, Earth Science, and Geological Society of America Bulletin, as well as several U.S. Geological Survey professional papers and other journals, and he recently was invited to submit a paper for the volume Tree-ring reconstructions in natural hazards research: a state-of-the-art to be published in Advances in Global Change Research by Springer-Verlag.

Pat Pringle is president of the Northwest Scientific Association and is a member of the Tree-Ring Society, Geological Society of America, and the American Geophysical Union.

Keith Lazelle (Banquet Presentation)

In 2007, Keith Lazelle was given what he terms a "dream assignment" by the Hoh River Trust. He was hired to photograph 60 miles of the Hoh River on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, during four seasons, from its headwaters on Mount Olympus to the Pacific Ocean. The result is a beautiful book, Fast Moving Water, and a two-year traveling exhibit sponsored by the University of Washington’s Burke Museum. Keith will present “the photographer’s story” behind Fast Moving Water while viewing one of the last virtually intact rivers in the contiguous United States.

Biography

Native Washingtonian Keith Lazelle was raised in the Olympia area. He studied Asian aesthetics and culture at Linfield College in Oregon, and Alaska Airlines Magazine noted this influence: "Spare, contemplative images dominate much of Keith Lazelle’s work, inviting further contemplation of the natural world." Lazelle and his wife and agent, Jane Hall, live on Dabob Bay on the Olympic Peninsula in a landscape recently designated for future acquisition as a state natural area. His clients include The Hoh River Trust, The Audubon Society, Alaska Airlines Magazine, Coldwater Creek, Eddie Bauer, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle Opera and The Nature Conservancy. Client Gordon Todd noted “Keith Lazelle’s work is among the most original and artistic nature photography in the country.”

Peggy Olwell (Friday Plenary Session)

Native Plant Materials Development Program: Meeting Native Plant Material Needs for Restoring Native Plant Communities

Drought, increased wildfires, invasive species and species redistribution are just a few of the complex issues resulting from climate change that land managing agencies are facing. The future of managing native plant communities across the nation will require all of us to work together in meeting common conservation goals for native plant communities. The U.S. Native Plant Materials Development Program is working with over 500 partners who are collecting, researching and storing seeds in anticipation of the need to sustain healthy native plant communities in light of climate change. Congress directed the Bureau of Land Management to develop this program to ensure that a diversity of species and a sufficient quantity of genetically appropriate seed is available for restoration and rehabilitation.

Biography

Peggy Olwell is the Plant Conservation Program Manager for the Bureau of Land Management in Washington, DC. Peggy has worked on endangered species issues for more than 20 years. Prior to BLM, Peggy was the Endangered Species Program Manager for the National Park Service where she was instrumental in developing the Plant Conservation Alliance, a partnership of 15 federal agencies and over 275 state and private organizations implementing a national plant conservation strategy, which addresses issues such as medicinal plants, invasive alien plants, restoration, and research and information sharing. Currently, she is chair of the PCA Federal Native Plant Committee.

Prior to NPS, Peggy was the Conservation Program Manager for the Center for Plant Conservation where she developed policy and guidance for the National Collection of Endangered Plants. Peggy also worked as the Regional Botanist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southwest Regional Office of Endangered Species where she developed and implemented recovery plans and Endangered Species Act listing for many of the endangered plants of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Peggy co-edited with Don Falk and Connie Millar a 1996 publication by Island Press entitled, Restoring Diversity: Strategies for Reintroduction of Endangered Plants. She is chair of the North American Plant Specialist Group for IUCN. Peggy received her B.S. in Botany from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.S. in Biology from Southern Methodist University.