Planning Workshops for the Development and Commencement of the Mediterranean Reserve Managers International Training Cooperative

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The University of California, Office of the President, Oakland is awarded a grant to conduct planning workshops and establish new working groups that will coordinate the management of University of California Natural Reserve System (NRS). The NRS is the largest university-run natural reserve system in the world and manages 36 sites with relatively undisturbed examples of the state's natural ecosystems, totaling approximately 55,000 ha (135,000 acres) in area, as well as basic facilities of infrastructure needed to support teaching and research activities. The NRS provides ecological expertise in areas not otherwise served by the resource management community, in part by developing and maintaining long-term research on ecosystem structure and function and the population dynamics of key species. The goal of the planning effort will be to advance the potential of biological field stations for addressing the most pressing environmental challenges facing science and society today by: (1) promoting cross-disciplinary scientific research that informs and supports environmental management to protect California's exceptional biodiversity and unique ecosystems; (2) enhancing educational opportunities for future conservation professionals; and, (3) providing environmental outreach programs relevant not only to the general California public but to other Mediterranean-climate regions as well. The NRS operates within one of the world's five Mediterranean-climate regions, globally recognized as "biodiversity hotspots". The combined regions cover only slightly more than 2% of the world's land areas, but support approximately 20% of all vascular plant species. These Mediterranean-climate regions also are recognized internationally as some of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world and are predicted to experience very great proportional change in biodiversity by 2100 owing to their sensitivity to changes in land use and climate. Products of these workshops and working groups will be significant to a wide spectrum of interests, inside and outside of the university system, internal and external to the state of California and internationally. They will highlight and focus on the complexity of ecological and global change, and social science research related to conservation science, expand the clientele for these disciplines, and motivate others to understand their linkages. These are all critical issues for making the best use of conservation science to inform resource management of natural areas. A longer term goal of this training program is to provide training opportunities globally among the five Mediterranean-climate regions of the world for land management through applied research opportunities. This will lead to a training program, the Mediterranean Reserve Managers International Cooperative (Cooperative), which will provide a means whereby reserve and field station managers in different parts of the Mediterranean-climate world interact with and learn from their colleagues. The Cooperative will provide hands-on training for reserve managers in California and the four other Mediterranean regions to use the best available science to inform how they preserve and protect the ecosystems for which they are responsible, and develop proactive management plans to anticipate potential threats such as invasive species, non-native pathogens, climate change, human population pressures on protected areas, and other disturbances events.