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Why ?#‎CalNat?? Director Merenlender, a UC Agriculture & Natural Resources and Environmental Science, Policy, & Management (ESPM) - UC Berkeley Cooperative Extension specialist and conservation biologist talks to California Agriculture Journal about the program's success, conservation, and biodiversity in California. 

When UC ANR conservation biologist Adina Merenlender launched the California Naturalist program in 2012, she was looking to do more than just educate people. She wanted to build a community — inspired to be stewards of the natural world and to push for the resources and policies needed to defend the state's threatened biodiversity.

“Success to me,” Merenlender said on an afternoon walk through the oak woodlands of the Hopland Research and Extension Center (REC), “is when the public connects directly with what UC has to offer and will go to bat for UC gardens, reserves and presses, and call for more faculty to study and teach natural history.” Read more here: http://bit.ly/CalAGCalNat. 

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Have you BioBlitzed this spring? Check out our partner SPAWN, Salmon Protection And Watershed Network's June 4

Bioblitz along Lagunitas Creek. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY! This fall, the National Park Servicewill remove an abandoned small town alongside the creek. The floodplain, creek banks, and riparian habitats will be restored to provide critical rearing habitat for coho salmon and steelhead trout. SPAWN and the California Academy of Sciences will monitor species biodiversity and water quality changes as a result of the restoration efforts on a semi-annual basis. Join SPAWN California Naturalists to provide valuable baseline iNaturalist.orgdata for the project! If you can, stay after the Bioblitz to collect native seeds and remove invasive plants along this site. Email Catie@tirn.net with any questions Here's the Blitz's iNaturalist site: http://www.inaturalist.org/…/lagunitas-creek-tocaloma-biobl…?#‎BioBlitz2016?

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80 Percent of Young Environmental Scientists Could Use More Natural History Training. Article in the Scientific American's Artful Ameoba blog. "Natural history is vanishing from the academic ecosystem, and it may be harming our ability to make big theoretical advances"  Read more here. 

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June 4 is ?#‎NationalTrailsDay?! Here's to our California Naturalists, partners, and all the other volunteers/Corps around the state who actively work on public space issues, trail interpretation, maintenance, native plant restoration, and other projects that make being a naturalist in this beautiful state so rewarding! Thank you!

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We just sent out notifications to our first round of ?#‎CalNat2016? Statewide Conference Scholarship recipients. That feels GREAT! Can't wait to see you, Naturalists! Thanks to our sponsors who help make this conference possible! Save the Redwoods League, U.S. Forest Service, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Riverside, The Nature Conservancy, Acorn Naturalists, Heyday Books, University of California Press, Timothy Rodrigues in support of diverse people and perspectives, and in memory of Ruth Esther Durham. Our sponsor page is here on the conference website.