December 2025 CBI Newsletter

Giving Tuesday, December 2nd!

This Giving Tuesday, help protect the data, science, and partnerships that safeguard our planet’s future.

Our open-access platform, Data Basin, remains free for everyone—but keeping it that way depends on your support. Hosting, data curation, and essential updates all require operational funding from people like you. This year, with the help of our dedicated volunteers, CBI rescued thousands of critical spatial datasets from federal libraries before they were lost to the public. These data are now safe—but they need to be processed to make them accessible to scientists, land managers, and communities everywhere.

At the same time, as wildfires grow more frequent and severe, access to reliable data has never been more vital. Through the Global Wildfire Collective’s Spatial Data Gateway, CBI provides free, open access to critical wildfire information that helps communities prepare for and respond to fire risk. Your support makes this possible—and helps us go beyond the data to host workshops, connect with local leaders, and put science into action where it’s needed most.

This year, your gift is more than a donation—it’s an investment in open science, resilient communities, and a safer planet for all.

U.S. Surrendering Leadership in Protecting Internationally Traded Wildlife

CITES is an international treaty, signed by 185 nations in 1973, that ensures global trade in wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. Today, 40,900 species are listed under CITES protections—6,610 animal species and 34,310 plant species—across three levels ranging from total trade bans to tightly regulated trade.

For the past five decades, the United States has been a global leader in CITES, reflecting its position as the world’s second-largest wildlife importer after China. However, that leadership role appears to be shifting.

At the upcoming 20th Conference of the Parties (COP20), to be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan in late November, delegates will consider 51 proposals to regulate wildlife trade. Historically, the U.S. has submitted about a dozen proposals per meeting, but this year it will submit only five—none of which seek to increase protections. Instead, two proposals call for downlisting species (the Guadalupe fur seal and peregrine falcon), one seeks the deletion of the already-extinct Caribbean monk seal (last seen in the 1960s), and another would amend trade rules for American ginseng by exempting farmed plants, potentially increasing risks of laundering wild-collected specimens.

Other species considered for action by the U.S., such as the painted woolly bat from Southeast Asia—popular in U.S. décor and trinket markets—were ultimately excluded, meaning protections for these species will be delayed for at least another two to three years.

Not submitting a proposal does not mean the U.S. will oppose stronger protections for traded species, but its current lack of leadership is raising concern within the conservation community. Countries that put forward proposals are granted more speaking time at international meetings, giving them greater influence in swaying others. With so few submissions, the U.S. will have a much weaker presence.

A Place For Pollinators

A recent Flora Magazine article from the California Native Plant Society spotlights the development of the Pollinator Companion, a data-driven tool within Calscape that models plant–pollinator interactions to inform restoration and habitat planning. The platform builds on foundational work by CBI’s very own Dr. Chris Cosma, whose doctoral research at UC Riverside produced the original predictive framework, Butterfly Net. Now, as co-lead of the Morpho Initiative, Dr. Cosma continues to advance methods that integrate large biodiversity datasets to enhance the accuracy and accessibility of pollinator-plant relationship modeling across California’s diverse ecosystems.

Modeling Fire: Comparing Frameworks, Scales, and Solutions

As wildfires grow in scale and complexity, the models we use to understand them must evolve just as quickly. From forecasting fire spread in vulnerable communities to projecting century-long forest shifts, fire science depends on computational tools designed for different questions, scales, and users.

On December 2, join four leading researchers as they reveal how their modeling frameworks tackle these challenges—what each can achieve, where their limits lie, and why those boundaries matter. Through comparative case studies, this workshop will explore a central truth: there’s no single “best” model, only tools suited—or unsuited—to the problems we aim to solve.

• Dr. Michael Gollner, UC Berkeley – Simulating fire spread in the wildland–urban interface
• Dr. Robert Scheller, NC State University – Integrating social dynamics and climate change in LANDIS-II
• Dr. Melissa Lucash, University of Oregon – Modeling climate-driven shifts in boreal forest structure
• Dr. Alexandra D Syphard, Conservation Biology Institute & Global Wildfire Collective – Applying machine learning to map fire occurrence

Interior Proposed to Rescind Public Lands Rule

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oversees roughly 245 million acres of public surface lands and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights. In 1976, Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) in response to mounting public concern over the environmental health of public lands and their resources. FLPMA required the BLM to give environmental values priority over competing commercial uses, mandating that lands be managed to protect their natural and cultural integrity and that especially vulnerable or critical areas receive additional safeguards. While the law established important protections, it was largely treated as a one-time corrective rather than an enduring operating principle, and commercial uses under the agency’s multiple-use mandate soon regained dominance over conservation.

Over time, a growing body of scientific evidence showed that land management decisions were continuing to degrade public lands. In response, the Biden Administration issued the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule—commonly called the Public Lands Rule—which took effect in June 2024. Unlike FLPMA, which elevated environmental considerations above others, the 2024 rule formally established conservation as a legitimate “use” of public lands, placing it on equal footing with commercial interests in BLM decision making. Critics argue that flaws in the rule’s administrative details may limit its effectiveness on the ground, but it nonetheless represents a significant step in reaffirming the central importance of conservation in the management of America’s public lands.

On September 10, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced plans to fully rescind this rule. Officials claim the rollback restores “balanced, multiple-use management.” Secretary Doug Burgum said, “Overturning this rule protects our American way of life and gives our communities a voice in the land that they depend on.”

In reality, this action is less about empowering local communities and more about granting large corporations easier access to exploit public lands—particularly for fossil fuel development—at the expense of local environments and the shared values of all Americans. By their own admission, one of the main benefits of the proposed rescission is to remove “unnecessary barriers to energy development.”

These lands belong to all of us, and now is the time to act. The existing Public Lands Rule should include stronger elements ensuring conservation effectiveness rather than a rollback that will almost certainly accelerate further degradation of our public lands. Public comments are open until November 10, 2025—make your voice heard.

Importance of Groundwater Versus Surface Water in Creating Shorebird Habitat in the Central Valley of California

Historically, California’s Central Valley supported a diverse mosaic of perennial grasslands, oak woodlands and savannas, and vast marshes and seasonal wetlands. Although most of these natural habitats have been converted to agriculture and urban development, the valley remains a vital stopover for more than 100 million birds along the Pacific Flyway. The Audubon Society has designated much of the region as an Important Bird Area because of its critical role for waterfowl, shorebirds, and marsh-nesting songbirds.

While commercial rice fields have replaced much of the original wetlands, they continue to provide significant wildlife habitat. Bird conservation efforts in the valley have focused on agricultural fields and managed wetlands. Through initiatives such as BirdReturns and Bid4Birds, The Nature Conservancy and the California Ricelands Waterbird Foundation compensate rice farmers for flooding fields after harvest. This practice not only helps decompose rice straw but also creates valuable shorebird habitat.

Research by CBI Senior Scientist Dr. Erin Conlisk and collaborators at The Nature Conservancy have shown that shorebird density increases when fields are flooded earlier in the fall and managed to be about 50-70 percent inundated, 5–10 cm deep, and with minimal straw or stubble cover. Interestingly, flooding consistency, across years and months, suggests that birds prefer places that have provided good habitat in the past. Preliminary results found some evidence that groundwater-fed flooding, rather than surface water, is linked to greater shorebird use. These findings provide important guidance for habitat management in agricultural landscapes and are critical for the conservation and recovery of declining shorebird populations.

Online Panel Discussion: Resilient Landscapes and Prepared Communities

On September 23, 2025, the Theodore Payne Foundation brought together a dynamic panel of experts for an online conversation exploring how to build resilient landscapes and prepare communities for the challenges ahead. One of the panelists was CBI’s very own Dr. Alexandra Syphard, who contributed her expertise on wildfire resilience and community preparedness. Speakers shared inspiring insights, practical strategies, and proven approaches designed to help communities adapt, overcome obstacles, and thrive in the face of an uncertain future.

You can watch the full conversation in the YouTube video linked below!

The Climate Crossroads: Urgent Warnings, Political Backsliding, and the Power of Truth

Earlier this year, James Hansen and colleagues published a paper titled Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-informed? The authors present extensive evidence leading to a stark conclusion: the climate crisis is more severe than widely reported, and only an urgent global response can meet the challenge. We are already experiencing stronger storms, record-breaking floods, extreme heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and devastating wildfires. These impacts will not only persist but intensify, threatening countless lives and causing enormous economic losses. Perhaps most alarming, the study warns that if current trends continue, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a critical ocean current system – could collapse within 20 to 30 years. Such a tipping point, described as the “Point of No Return,” would drive catastrophic sea-level rise and irreversible shifts in Earth’s climate system.

Now is not the time to deny reality or delay action – yet that is precisely the path the U.S. is taking. The current administration remains the only government preparing to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, while also dismantling international climate partnerships and rolling back energy and climate commitments through executive orders. In August 2025, NPR reported that NASA had been directed to develop plans to terminate at least two satellite missions that track atmospheric carbon dioxide. These satellites also provide crucial data on plant growth, and news of their potential loss has raised alarm among both scientists and farmers.

Confronted by the mounting scientific evidence of a rapidly changing climate, the fossil fuel industry and its political allies have mounted an aggressive global campaign to dismiss climate science as alarmist and portray solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as unrealistic. They promote technological fixes such as carbon capture and emphasize adaptation strategies – rebranded as “resilience” – as sufficient responses to what they frame as an exaggerated problem. To justify inaction, climate science critics even cloak their stance in terms like “climate realism,” while downplaying the escalating risks.

There are three recent YouTube presentations that provide valuable information on this critically important topic. The first is video titled, New Research DEBUNKS Climate Disinformation presented by Dave Borlace from the channel called “Just Have a Think,” which was posted on August 17, 2025. The video focuses largely on a book by Genevieve Guenther called The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, with other supporting information. You can also watch a presentation by the author that she gave at The Metcalf Institute in May of this year. The last video is a fact-filled and passionate presentation by Al Gore called, Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable – and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth. Together, these provide a solid update about where we are regarding the climate crisis.

Announcing the North American Forest Initiative

Dr. Dominick DellaSala, a long-time CBI Associate, has dedicated over four decades to nonprofit conservation work as a global biodiversity and climate scientist. He has also served as President of the North America Section of the Society for Conservation Biology. An internationally recognized author, he has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and co-authored nine award-winning books, including Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation, Mixed-Severity Fire: Nature’s Phoenix, and Conservation Science & Advocacy for a Planet in Peril: Speaking Truth to Power. Dr. DellaSala will soon be launching a new CBI initiative focused on North American forest conservation. Content is currently being added to the CBI website describing the important work Dr. DellaSala and his colleagues are doing and is expected to launch publicly around mid-month. This important initiative will be a valuable resource for all who care about the long-term protection of forests. Please check in here over the coming weeks.

National Grassland Quality Modeling

Over the past two years, CBI spatial modelers have been developing map-based products to support the USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). A central goal of this work is to generate more accurate maps of grassland quality, enabling large-scale evaluation of ecosystem services. This spatially explicit approach provides USDA with the information needed to track the relative conservation success of a program that voluntarily safeguards over 26 million acres of private farmland nationwide.

To achieve this, CBI integrated cutting-edge remote sensing data with key environmental indicators and applied machine learning techniques within the Google Earth Engine platform. Draft models have already been produced at a national scale, with advanced methods tested in several grassland-rich states. Each model incorporates three primary components: vigor, composition, and landscape structure and resilience. Preliminary results (Figure 1) have also been built into an online assessment tool, which is currently under review.

Dr. Alexandra Syphard Featured on NPR – Insights on Roads, Wildfires, and Unintended Consequences

We’re delighted to share that Dr. Alexandra Syphard, Senior Research Scientist at CBI and Director of Science at the Global Wildfire Collective, appeared on NPR on August 28, 2025, to discuss proposed changes to the Roadless Rule and their potential implications for wildfire risk.

Dr. Syphard eloquently invoked the Sevareid Principle, reminding listeners that “the law of unintended consequences is a very real law.” She emphasized that while roads may facilitate access for fire suppression, they also tend to increase fire ignitions—as data shows up to four times more ignitions within 50 meters of roads than in roadless areas. Moreover, road construction transforms vegetation—favoring flammable grasses in place of mature forest—and thereby amplifying fire risk.

Marine Mammal Protection Act Under Threat

With overwhelming public support, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was signed into law by Richard Nixon on October 21, 1972. This landmark legislation marked a turning point in marine conservation, establishing comprehensive protections for whales, dolphins, manatees, sea otters, seals, sea lions, walruses, and polar bears within U.S. waters.

The MMPA was groundbreaking in its adoption of an ecosystem-based approach to wildlife conservation, making it the first law of its kind in the world with its central aim to maintain sustainable populations of marine mammals in relation to the health and capacity of their habitats. The Act not only brought an end to commercial whaling in the U.S., but also laid the foundation for the recovery of numerous species once teetering on the brink of collapse.

Thanks to the MMPA, no marine mammal species have gone extinct in U.S. waters since the law was enacted. In fact, many populations have made remarkable recoveries, including humpback whales, gray whales, gray seals, and California sea lions. When the MMPA was passed, humpback whale numbers had plummeted by 95%, with only a few thousand remaining. Today, their populations have grown significantly – approximately 13,000 in the North Atlantic and around 21,000 in the North Pacific.

Despite this amazing recovery, like most marine mammals, humpback whales still face serious threats. Climate change is perhaps the most significant medium-term threat as rising ocean temperatures disrupt their food sources. But there are other day-to-day impacts that are causing problems such as entanglement in fishing gear, vessel strikes, vessel harassment, and underwater noise take their toll.

Today, however, this critical legislation faces serious threats as a draft MMPA reauthorization bill was introduced by Rep. Nicholas Begich (R-AK) in early July. The proposed Act reauthorization would –

• Downgrade the statute’s mandate from healthy populations to mere survival
• Weaken the legal standards for authorizing activities that kill and injure marine mammals
• Eliminate protections from commercial fishing
• Hamstring the ability to issue any new regulations under the Act
• Drastically undermine marine mammal conservation
• Delay action (10 years) to save the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale

The MMPA has been a major success and is essential to safeguarding the future of marine mammals and the ecosystems they call home.

Bats in Eastern Washington

Bats are experiencing severe declines, with 90% of species affected and 53% at risk of extinction within 15 years, making them one of the most threatened vertebrate groups in North America.  Bats are extremely important ecologically as they provide major ecological benefits including insect control, pollination, and seed dispersal. Over the last two growing seasons, CBI scientist Dr. Chris Cosma has been monitoring bats and nocturnal flying insects in Douglas County, Washington in order to better understand how different landscape conditions impact bat species richness and abundance. Funded by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Chris used the latest acoustic monitoring technology to survey bats and camera traps to evaluate their prey base – primarily moths.

He surveyed sites that represented a gradient of surrounding land types—active cropland, cropland under restoration via the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and regional protected areas. Using generalized linear mixed-effects models, he analyzed how bat activity, species richness, diversity, and feeding behavior was influenced by environmental variables including climate, land cover, water features, and nocturnal flying insect abundance.

KEY FINDINGS

All 14 bat species native to the region, including at-risk species like Townsend’s big-eared bat, were detected during the study. Temperature was identified as the strongest environmental factor influencing bat activity, with both nightly fluctuations and long-term minimum temperatures significantly predicting bat diversity, activity levels, and foraging intensity. While nocturnal insect abundance had a smaller effect, it still showed a significant influence on bat feeding behavior, particularly at finer temporal scales.

Agricultural practices had mixed effects on bat communities. Areas with insect-pollinated crops and greater crop diversity within a 2–5 km radius played a key role in supporting vulnerable and rare species like Towsend’s big-eared bat. The USDA Conservation Reserve Program-enrolled lands, however, showed consistent negative associations with bat activity, diversity, and foraging. These lands are currently in early stages of restoration.

Management implications

These findings show that diverse bat communities play a key role in eastern Washington’s agricultural landscapes. Bats were more active in areas with diverse insect-pollinated crops, suggesting that diversified farming provides better foraging habitat than simplified, wind-pollinated systems. Protecting and expanding areas with water sources is also essential for bat conservation.

New Landscape Intactness Assessment for California

In 2016, the California Energy Commission funded CBI to conduct an advanced landscape condition analysis, intended to use as a foundation for evaluating ecosystems, species habitats, and areas designated for renewable energy development. The resulting product was integrated into several statewide planning efforts, including the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP 2017 Assessment) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP 2025 Update). 

CBI’s modeling approach synthesizes complex spatial data into a suite of metrics that quantify terrestrial intactness—an estimate of naturalness or the degree of human disturbance—through a multidimensional lens. The resulting interactive product allows for identification of natural areas that maintain higher levels of ecosystem integrity, thus maximizing support of wildlife and ecosystem services. It also highlights key factors influencing the State’s landscape condition, such as infrastructure and urban development, and supports a deeper understanding of the wide range of human impacts occurring along that continuum.

In 2024, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) funded an update to produce a new version of this terrestrial intactness product, incorporating significant improvements in data quality and the inclusion of some new inputs such as invasive vegetation and habitat fragmentation metrics. The analysis provides a present-day estimate of the degree to which California’s natural landscapes have been impacted by human disturbance and the drivers at play in any given location. 

The 2025 version has been crafted with an eye towards incorporating data derived from more advanced methods, likely to be updated at regular intervals, thus setting the stage for products more directly comparable across time. The current upgrades and advancements in the analytical model provide a solid foundation for future work – such as finer resolution models that would offer additional detail needed to address certain planning and management issues by agencies, NGOs, and others

Landmark Conservation Policy Rescinded 

Last week, USDA Secretary Rollins announced that the Administration is rescinding the landmark 2001 Roadless Rule Policy, which prohibits road building and resource extraction on 58.5 million acres (~30%) of National Forest lands. The rule was enacted after a public comment period and 600 open meetings around the country resulting in 1.5 million comments – overwhelmingly in favor of the rule – from citizens demanding that the degradation of environmentally sensitive roadless areas be halted.

What is a Roadless Area?

Roadless areas are National Forest lands that have remained unroaded for a variety of reasons, including inaccessibility and environmental sensitivity. Roadless areas provide many ecosystem services that are not as readily available in roaded landscapes, such as:

• Provide refuges for many threatened, endangered, and endemic fish and wildlife species.
• Contain old-growth forests and other rare habitat types that are more resistant to forest fires and effective at controlling climate change.
• Provide clean drinking water to millions of Americans.
• Serve as unspoiled reference areas for research into issues such as climate change.
• Act as buffer zones against invasive, noxious, or exotic species.
• Protect important historic and cultural areas.
• Host a wide variety of outdoor recreation activities for visitors.

Leading up to the enactment of the Roadless Rule, several scientific studies demonstrated unequivocal support for the protection of roadless areas (see insert). At the same time, scientists were turning their attention to documenting the impacts of roads and associated logging on the extent and rate of forest fragmentation across the nation (see Conservation Biology 2000 – Special Edition on roads).

Roads are one of the most destructive human impacts on the planet and the U.S. has more roads than any other nation on Earth. The current road network present in our National Forests is already over 378,000 miles, enough to drive around the globe nearly 16 times. Consequently, roadless areas are what remain of the nation’s dwindling intact and functional ecosystems.

Unfortunately, once roads are built, they rarely go away. The negative impacts of roads on the environment and natural ecosystems are numerous and significant. The physical presence of roads is problematic in many ways – wildlife is particularly impacted – but the bigger issue is the sprawling impacts that follow. Widespread habitat destruction, fragmentation, and degradation are made possible by the access roads provide.
In her recent statement, Secretary Rollins stated, “This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests. It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.”

Contrary to the claim that it is ‘abundantly clear’ this action will make things better; the scientific evidence clearly states the opposite. With regard to wildfire, numerous researchers have clearly demonstrated that roads significantly increase human-caused ignition. And once a fire is started, the corridors of invasive flashy fuels that roads promote only increases the risk of a severe fire.

The benefit to future generations is truly aspirational, but destroying and degrading our public lands for corporate profit is simply stealing from current and future generations. Our National Forests (including roadless areas) already provide billions to the local economies. This economy is sustainable long-term as it does not rely on extraction.

The majority of the American people love that we still have unspoiled public lands that belong to all of us. The vision the Roadless Rule embodied was popular in 2001 and it is even more popular now. Rescinding the Roadless Rule is indefensible on all counts.

Designing Sustainable Recreational Trails 

Recreation on public lands has boomed over recent years and trails are a major value to many outdoor enthusiasts. However, there are many aspects of trails that influence their long-term sustainability. Trails are not benign ecologically and there are numerous considerations for reducing their impact on natural ecosystems. There are also economic, physical, and social considerations (including Tribal treaty rights) to consider when designing a sustainable trails network.

On July 26, CBI’s Geospatial Team Lead, Rebecca Degagne, was a guest of the American Trails “Advancing Trails Webinar Series” giving a talk on Data-Driven Decision Support for Sustainable Trail Planning and Management. Rebecca gave an overview of the ongoing work that CBI has been involved in to provide the US Forest Service Region 6 (Oregon and Washington) and Deschutes Trails Coalition (Oregon) a decision support application that provides an assessment of the environmental, economic, physical and social sustainability of existing and potential trails. Incorporating 150 datasets, the tool assembles data such as aesthetic value, maintenance costs, potential user type conflicts, landslide vulnerability, habitat vulnerability to produce a score for each trail segment in question. The pilot Trails Assessment and Planning Tool has been well received and getting lots of use.

Global Wildfire Collective Webinar – Fire in Boreal Ecosystems

REGISTER NOW for the second event in the Global Wildfire Collective’s Fire Ecology webinar series! This time, the focus is on wildfires in boreal ecosystems. This session will explore both the shared characteristics and key differences between the North American and Eurasian boreal biomes. We’ll investigate the ecological shifts and human influences shaping these regions, and examine current management strategies, policy frameworks, and the critical scientific and data gaps that must be addressed to deepen our understanding of fire dynamics across boreal landscapes.

Speakers at this event:

• Dr. Mike Flannigan – BC Innovation Research Chair in Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science, Faculty of Science, Thompson Rivers University
• Dr. Sarah Henderson – Scientific Director of Environmental Health Services, BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC)
• Dr. Johan Sjöström – Senior Research Scientist, RISE
• Dr. Jen Schmidt – Associate Professor of Natural Resources Management and Policy, University of Alaska, Anchorage- Institute of Social and Economic Research

Global Wildfire Collective Expert Group Meeting

A reflection by our Executive Director, Robin Jones

CBI team members, Dr. Alexandra Syphard, Karl Peet and I have just returned to the U.S. from an inspiring and productive week in Bogotá, Colombia. There, we conducted the first expert group meeting of the Global Wildfire Collective, focused on identifying resources and gaps for wildfire resilience & recovery in the Latin America and Caribbean region. Individuals from nine countries attended, representing various research science fields & institutions, government agencies, firefighting brigades, indigenous communities, NGOs, funding institutions and private sector companies.

Our first day of meetings took place at the beautiful Universidad del Rosario campus, where perspectives and priorities of each of the stakeholders were shared. We discussed existing resources, gaps and roadblocks hindering progress toward addressing the increasing risks of devastating and highly destructive wildfires in the region. We worked together to formulate ways in which the Global Wildfire Collective can work to fill these gaps and address challenges in the region. This meeting re-emphasized several aspects of the Global Wildfire Collective’s mission, including further investment in scientific study and regional adaptation of existing fire models/tools/techniques.

Our second day was a field visit to the Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza, on the outskirts of Bogotá.  There, we were given permission to visit the site of a sizable January 2025 fire in the páramo. Páramo is a rare and unique high-altitude ecosystem found in the Andes, particularly in Colombia, and is known for its high biodiversity and its crucial role in water regulation and storage. Despite fire being historically documented in this ecosystem, little is known about the frequency and trends of fire in these high-elevation landscapes. Researchers from the Parque Nacional, Universidad del Rosario and Instituto Humboldt presented their latest research aimed at better understanding the nature fire regimes of the ecosystem, how those regimes may be changing due to climate change and human influence, and how resilient the ecosystem is to fire.  The day reiterated a need for scientific understanding of fire regimes and fire ecology in lesser-populated, lower fire frequency ecosystems of the Global South.

Due to the sharp eye of Oscar Tibaquicha, captain of the Brigada Forestal Indígena Múisca, we had the thrilling chance to observe a pair of Andean bears in their natural habitat. The Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus) is the only living species of bear native to South America. The species is classified as vulnerable by the IUCN because of habitat loss.
Finally, the CBI team had the incredible privilege of being invited to spend the day with local indigenous peoples at Resguardo de Múisca de Cota, learning from their spiritual & political leaders and their volunteer brigada forestale (forest guardians) about their traditional knowledge of fire, and the impacts of wildfires on their community in recent years. We hiked along the hillsides of their territory, observing the prevalence of highly flammable invasive species that have shifted the composition of their landscape due to human interventions and in the aftermath of recent fires.

We left Bogotá feeling inspired, motivated and empowered by our new partnerships and relationships to accelerate the pace of understanding and adaptation to fire via the work of the Global Wildfire Collective. We look forward to sharing more updates as we kick off new work in the region.

Closer to Home

Tuolumne Utilities District Wildfire Defense Plan

Conservation Biology Institute and EN2 Resources, Inc. (en2resources.com/) partnered to develop the TUD Wildfire Defense Plan, which was adopted by Tuolumne Utilities District (TUD) in April.

This comprehensive strategy to protect Tuolumne County’s water resources and increase the community’s resilience to wildfire aligns with and implements the Tuolumne County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) and follows state and federal government directives relating to wildfire resilience for California’s communities and forests, including the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan and the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy Implementation Plan.

TUD Wildfire Defense Plan contains two components:

• The TUD Wildfire Risk Mitigation Plan, prepared by CBI in consultation with JUDa presents prioritized locations for mitigating wildfire risks to TUD infrastructure and supports the effective planning and implementation of the prioritized projects while providing co-benefits to the community and natural resources.
• The TUD Fire Water Draft Points Plan, prepared by EN2 Resources in consultation with TUD, identifies 49 strategic raw water draft points across the district to increase water availability for fire suppression, reduce demands on potable water systems, and enhance emergency response capabilities.

The completion of the TUD Wildfire Defense Plan involved extensive collaboration with key stakeholders, including the Tuolumne County Fire Safe Council, Tuolumne County Fire Safety Advisory Committee, CAL FIRE and local fire districts, Tribal bands, and industry and private partners.

General Manager Don Perkins highlighted the importance of the plan, stating, “This initiative maximizes our ability to make gravity-fed, non-potable water available for emergency fire response while also protecting our green infrastructure through effective vegetation management. It’s a comprehensive approach that integrates the needs of the community, wildlife, and our water systems.”

With the plan now officially adopted, TUD is committed to pursuing additional grant funding opportunities to ensure the plan’s implementation.
TUD Wildfire Defense Plan was developed with funding from the USDA Forest Service Community Wildfire Defense Grant.

See more information here!

UN Proposal Submission

As part of CBI’s ongoing Global Wildfire Collective efforts, CBI submitted a proposal on behalf of more than 20 UN Rio Convention members to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification to create a Joint Work Programme and Technical Expert Group on Wildfire Resilience to address the growing global threat of wildfire to climate, local people, biodiversity, and the land. The proposal was submitted for consideration by the science advisory body to CBD called the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice at their next meeting scheduled for October 2025. If accepted, it would raise the profile of wildfire in the UN Rio Conventions leading to the creation of more coordinated nature- and community-positive fire management strategies that are urgently needed around the world.

CBI Webinar

Learn about Data-Driven Decision Support for Sustainable Trail Planning

The Conservation Biology Institute has been invited to present work on sustainable trail planning and management in the Advancing Trails Webinar Series on June 26th at 10:00 am Pacific Time. The webinar will showcase an online application to support collaborative decision-making and data-driven evaluation of trail sustainability, developed by the Conservation Biology Institute in partnership with the US Forest Service and the Deschutes Trails Coalition. The prototype system facilitates tracking and visualizing important trail information and synthesizes spatial data into quantitative metrics covering physical, environmental, social, and economic dimensions of trail sustainability. Information summarized in the interface can be explored via interactive maps, augmenting critical on-the-ground knowledge of field crews and local managers. This application offers decision-makers and their partners a transparent means to evaluate the sustainability of both existing and proposed trails and is targeted for expansion to PNW National Forest lands.

Register here!

PUBLICATION

The Secret Lives of Moths

A recent publication by Dr. Chris Cosma enlightens his readers on the world’s top pollinators. Commonly, the most thought of pollinators are bees – which makes sense, bees are out doing their job every day easily noticed by us humans. But what about every night? This is where our other helpful and beautiful friends come in.

Dr. Cosma highlights several studies that found no difference between day and night pollination for crop species that were assumed to be primarily pollinated during the day by bees. However, 90% of the 139 plant species they analyzed showed no significant difference in pollination success between day and night. So, who has the night shift?

For the longest time, moths were primarily thought to be minor pollinators, relevant only in specialized cases with very specific flower species. However, the research shows that moths are around eight times more diverse than bees and 10 times more diverse than butterflies, which evolved from moths. Now, we know that moths are the single most diverse group of pollinators on Earth, with more than 123,000 species pollinating flowers (including crops) around the world.

Read the full article!

PUBLICATION

Regional patterns in U.S. wildfire activity: the critical role of ignition sources

An article by Dr. Alexandra D Syphard, Dr. Jon E Keeley, Dr. Erin Conlisk, and Mike Gough, published by Environmental Research Letters, educates its audience on how the role of specific ignition sources (especially human-caused) remain vastly understudied.

The authors analyzed wildfire records between 1940 and 2019 and found that different ignition sources were responsible for starting wildfires in different regions of the country. For example, lightning and campfires were the dominant sources of ignition in western regions, while arson drove fire activity east of the Mississippi River. Trends also varied significantly by region and over time, with housing growth explaining more in terms of fire frequency and climate primarily influencing area burned. Prevention of human-caused ignitions, such as campfires and arson, could offer efficient and effective strategies to mitigate wildfire impacts on human and natural systems under changing climate and land-use conditions.

Read the full publication!

PUBLICATION

Scientists’ warning on fossil fuels

Dr. William Ripple is the co-author of a recent publication on the subject of fossil fuels, which comes at a time when fossil fuels are again being advanced as the dominant energy source in the U.S. by the current Administration. The paper argues that fossil fuels, and the fossil fuel industry, are central drivers of multiple interconnected global crises including climate change, public health issues, environmental injustice, biodiversity loss, and pollution. It emphasizes that every stage of fossil fuel use causes severe harm. The industry has deliberately misled the public through decades of disinformation to delayed action. Focusing on the U.S.—the largest oil and gas producer—the authors call for immediate, science-based, and justice-oriented solutions: halting fossil fuel expansion, phasing out fossil fuel use, transitioning to clean energy, and holding the industry accountable. They argue that rapid phasing out of fossil fuels will provide innumerable societal and planetary benefits and forge a path toward a sustainable planet.

Read the full publication!

NEW DATA BASIN GATEWAY

Guam Offshore Resource Planning Gateway

CBI’s latest Data Basin gateway is now open.  The Guam Offshore Resource Planning Gateway was created with support from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Government of Guam’s Intergovernmental Resource Planning Task Force. The purpose of this task force is to facilitate collaboration among federal, territorial, and local agencies on marine based activities in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) region adjacent to Guam.

The Guam Offshore Resource Planning Gateway assembles geospatial information on natural and cultural resources, national security, and commercial ocean uses. The Gateway provides easy access to curated spatial datasets relevant to assessments for future offshore resource initiatives. This platform is intended to support the following tasks:

• Facilitate the exchange of information related to biological, cultural, and physical resources, as well as ocean use priorities and planning considerations.
• Coordinate marine spatial planning activities for development in alignment with Guam’s long-term infrastructure goals.
• Assist in identifying areas that may be suitable for potential resource development.
• Provide information about leasing processes, regulatory requirements, and relevant statutory frameworks.

Visit the new gateway!

EVENT

Expert Group Meeting in Bogotá, Colombia

The Global Wildfire Collective is convening an expert group meeting (EGM), May 21-22 at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia. Objectives of the EGM include determining current wildfire science data needs and resourcing gaps in the Latin America and Caribbean region, assessing and sharing existing efforts and advancing wildfire science and research and policy needs through an operational lens.

Participants in the event include representatives from firefighting agencies & associations, government ministries of environment, disaster risk and meteorology/hydrology, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, private sector representatives, local and Indigenous communities and multilateral development banks.

This meeting is by invitation only.  If you would like to request an invitation, please use this link.

EVENT

Conservation GIS Online Meetup Thursday May 8th

The Conservation Biology Institute and the Society for Conservation GIS are hosting a free Conservation GIS Meetup online Thursday May 8th @ 10am PT/1pm ET/6pm GMT. This event is an opportunity for conservationists, geospatial professionals, and interested community members to connect with their colleagues around the world, expand their networks, and learn about the upcoming SCGIS International Conference. 

There will be breakout rooms to give everyone an opportunity to interact with a supportive community and meet others passionate about using geospatial technology to facilitate conservation around the globe. We invite you and your colleagues to join by registering for the meetup now!

Find Plant Seed/Seedling Vendors to Support Conservation

Working closely with USDA, CBI analysts and software engineers have created a free easy-to-use Plant Finder and Vendor Match online tool to support participants in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). However, the tool is not limited to the CRP program and can serve the needs of any land stewardship effort requiring large quantities of seeds and seedlings, especially for native species.

In partnership with the Institute for Applied Ecology (IAE), CBI has added features to address the needs of the Native Seed Network significantly expanding the native seed customer and vendor base. This Vendor Browse component of a larger planning tool allows users to view registered seed/seedling vendors across the nation. Currently, the tool includes 214 vendors with limited profiles and another 45 who have voluntarily completed full profiles, which includes their complete plant species offerings. For vendors, the tool is designed for easy uploading of company profiles and seed/seedling species inventories.

We encourage all native seed vendors to add their profiles and inventories to the tool. You can do this easily by filling out this simple form located at https://crptool.org/contact/.  A member of the CBI team will send you an invite within 24 hours to create your full company profile. 

For More Information Contact Cole Soldo (cole.soldo@consbio.org) 

Mapping Global Forest Carbon

CBI is working with Canopy Planet to identify and map high carbon forest landscapes across the globe. The analysis brings together a number of authoritative global datasets that allows for scientifically defensible estimates for aboveground, belowground, and total carbon storage for the numerous forest types and ecoregions of the world. Results will be included in a planned update to the online Forest Mapper tool developed by Canopy Planet to help identify endangered forests. Canopy Planet, which is a non-profit dedicated to end deforestation and degradation of the world’s critical forests, uses the power of the global marketplace to secure ancient and endangered forests around the world.

Global Wildfire Collective

On March 20, 2025, Dr. Alexandra D. Syphard hosted the Global Wildfire Collective‘s inaugural webinar, Ecological & Human Causes and Impacts of Three Extreme Wildfire Events. Expert panelists compared and analyzed the ecological and human causes and impacts of three extreme wildfire events: (1) Australia: Black Summer bushfires (2019-2020), (2) Chile: Valparaíso wildfires (2024), (3) United States: Los Angeles wildfires (2025). Panelists included Dr. Owen Price, Dr. Alejandro Miranda, Dr. Jon Keeley, Dr. Stijn Erik R. Hantson, Dr. Mauro González, Dr. Susan L. Cutter.

If you missed the webinar, watch the recording!

To be notified about upcoming webinars or other activities of the Global Wildfire Collective, please join the mailing list! 

New CBI Team Member

WELCOMING KIM DELFINO TO OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

An Important Message

From Robin Jones, CBI Executive Director

We are all in this together!

During these politically challenging times, we have put much thought into how to carry on with our work to protect the values we hold dear. In some ways, we are in a relative position of privilege, in that the work we do every day continues to help safeguard our planet. Below are three ways you can participate in our mission.

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CBI Associates Program

BECOME A CBI ASSOCIATE

The CBI Associates program aims to partner with researchers and scientists working in the conservation science fields to expand our impact. The program has been designed to enable researchers and scientists that are not in CBI’s employ to leverage the CBI brand and institutional infrastructure to obtain and manage grant-funded projects within an established and reputable non-profit organization.

This program may be of particular interest to Federal employees that have recently lost jobs in these fields, particularly if they have ongoing research or planning projects funded with soft money, or a track record of successful proposal development.  If you, or someone you know, were impacted by the recent Federal government cuts, you can learn more about the CBI Associates program here.

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Help Preserve Environmental Data

BECOME A DATA BASIN VOLUNTEER

According to a New York Times analysis published on February 2, 2025, “more than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down … as federal agencies rush to heed President Trump’s orders.”  Already, missing data related to “climate” and “resilience” have been reported.  CBI’s Data Basin platform is well suited to host this type of spatially explicit data and it is free to use.  If you have a background in GIS and willing to volunteer your time toward collecting and uploading data to Data Basin to help preserve important natural resource data, please contact us at info@consbio.org and we will be in touch about ways you can contribute.

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Make a Donation

Of course, financial support is always welcome, even more so in a time when organizations like CBI face uncertainty about the availability of government funding.  Any contribution you are able to make is much appreciated and will help ensure that CBI continues to do its important work under these particularly difficult circumstances.

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Where Have All the Porkies Gone, and Can We Get Them Back?

Porcupines have been disappearing from western forests for years, and CBI is exploring if we can get them back in the Southern Sierra Nevada to also help the Pacific fisher.

Concerns have been mounting in recent decades over an apparent decline in the distribution and abundance of the North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) throughout the western US. This decline is especially evident, and troubling, in the southern Sierra Nevada of California, where CBI has been leading the effort to recover the endangered distinct population of fishers (Pekania pennanti). Porcupines were once a favorite, if not the favorite, food of fishers, but they are completely missing from the fisher diet in recent decades. In addition, porcupines are “ecosystem engineers” whose gnawing on tree bark creates multi-forked treetops, platforms, and cavities used by fishers and numerous other wildlife species, from nesting raptors to flying squirrels to martens. 

CBI is currently exploring with partners options for returning porcupines to southern Sierra Nevada forests to benefit the ecosystem and to help recover endangered fishers. Once common in Sierran mixed conifer forests, “quill pigs” were routinely shot and poisoned as pests during much of the Twentieth Century, because their food habits damaged trees and reduced their timber value. This persecution has largely ceased, but population declines have continued to the point that they seem to be completely absent from fisher habitat.

Returning porcupines to the southern Sierra Nevada will not be easy. Reasons for their disappearance are complex and not fully understood; their reproductive rates are extremely low (a mother can birth only one porcupette per year); and there is an inherent conundrum in that fisher predation on porcupines could hinder efforts to re-establish a population. Nevertheless, we believe the effort is worth a try. The first step is establishing a working group of porcupine and forest ecology experts to review all aspects of the problem and to develop a reintroduction feasibility study. We are in the very early stages of contacting interested experts and will be pursuing funding opportunities for a feasibility study.

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The Global Wildfire Collective 

A NEW CONSERVATION BIOLOGY INSTITUTE INITIATIVE

Altered fire regimes are leading to profound ecological transformations, posing serious threats to biodiversity and driving large-scale species extinctions.  Wildfires are also disrupting essential ecological services proportionately that humans depend upon (e.g. clean air and water, soil stability and fertility, carbon storage).  As the wildfire crisis accelerates, there is an urgent need for trans-disciplinary, trans-sector, and globally coordinated research to understand the causes and consequences of changing wildfire patterns, and how these scale across space and time. Yet, wildfire has traditionally been studied in institutional and disciplinary silos without accounting for the critical interconnections among human and ecological systems, and all the components within.

To break down these silos and promote cross-discipline, global collaboration, CBI has launched the Global Wildfire Collective (GWC).  The GWC is an interdisciplinary research and capacity-building group whose work cuts across topics, sectors and actors that drive and are subject to the impacts of wildfire.  The GWC is committed to establishing and proliferating wildfire resilience and recovery strategies that produce multiple co-benefits to maximize well-being in ecological and social systems.  

You can read more about the initiative, our activities and our charter members here. 

ATTEND OUR INAUGURAL WILDFIRE SCIENCE & ECOLOGY WEBINAR

This event will kick off the Global Wildfire Collective’s wildfire science and ecology webinar series.  CBI’s  Dr. Alexandra Syphard will moderate a discussion between international scientists that have studied the ecological and human causes and impacts of these three extreme wildfire events as well as the opportunities and challenges in recovery from these extreme events:

• Australia: Black Summer bushfires (2019-2020)
  • Dr. Owen Price, Associate Professor and Director in Bushfire Risk Management, University of Wollongong, Australia
• Chile: Valparaíso wildfires (2024)
  • Dr. Mauro González, Professor, Instituto de Conservación Biodiversidad, Universidad Austral de Chile
• United States: Los Angeles wildfires (2025)
  • Dr. Jon Keeley, USGS / UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability, US
• Ecology and post-fire recovery:
  • Dr. Stijn Erik R. Hantson, Associate Professor, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Universidad del Rosario, Colombia
• Wildfire recovery and social vulnerability:
  • Dr. Susan L. Cutter, Director, Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute, University of South Carolina, US

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New CBI Team Member

WELCOMING DAN WASSEL TO OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS