Archives: Profiles
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Controlled Burns
Fire plays an integral role in the natural regeneration of many forests, clearing underbrush, eliminating insects and invasive species, returning nutrients to the soil, and opening up the canopy for new tree growth.
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Habitat Fragmentation
The division of a large, continuous habitat into smaller, disconnected patches, through natural disasters like fire or human activity like road-building is known as habitat fragmentation.
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Salmon
Salmon are a keystone species in the river-side forests of the Pacific Northwest, critical for cycling nutrients inland that feed predators like eagles or black bears, and in turn fueling an entire ecosystem of wildlife. There are five species native to the region – chinook, coho, chum, sockeye, and pink salmon – all that reach…
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Kim Sager-Fradkin
Kim Sager-Fradkin is the wildlife program manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe in Port Angeles, Washington. Prior to working for the Tribe, Sager-Fradkin worked for the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. Sager-Fradkin’s work has two primary tracks: the first is to explore wildlife response to removal of the Elwha dams, and…
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Vanessa Castle
Vanessa Castle is a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, based near Port Angeles, Washington, where she works as a fish and wildlife technician. She continues her tribe’s tradition of caring for the land by helping monitor the return of salmon on the Elwha River after the world’s largest dam removal project and investigating…
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Bioblitzes
One of the first steps to protect native plants and animals is making sure we understand where wildlife is located and how it’s distributed. A Bioblitz takes a snapshot of an ecosystem at a certain point in time — usually conducted over just a few hours or a few days — when team of observers gathers together…
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Natalia Greene
Natalia Greene is a political scientist with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). She promoted the recognition of the Rights for Nature in Ecuador’s Constitution and has worked on environmental and Indigenous aspects of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative to keep oil underground in the Amazon. She was previously the president, and is currently…
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Javier Robayo
Javier Robayo is the executive director of Fundación EcoMinga, a nonprofit which maintains over 27,000 acres of protected areas in Ecuador’s Chocó and Tropical Andes. As a biologist and educator, he has led more than 200 research and teaching expeditions in Ecuador. His extensive, collaborative field work has led to the discovery of more than…
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Callie Broaddus
Callie Broaddus is founder and executive director of Reserva: The Youth Land Trust, which empowers young people to help protect threatened species and habitats through conservation, education, and storytelling. Reserva’s Dracula Youth Reserve in Ecuador is said to be the world’s first, entirely youth-funded reserve. Broaddus is a member of the Rainforest Trust Council, the…
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Longleaf Pines
Longleaf pine forests once spanned 90 million acres of the southeast United States. Early colonists relied heavily on the pines as materials for shipbuilding: the trees’ tall, sturdy, and straight trunks being the perfect material for ship masts, and their resin was used as tar. By 1970, only 3% of the original forests remained. Many…
