The World Affairs Seminar
The seminar presents a current topic of international importance to some 100 to 150 high school students from Jefferson, Berkeley and Washington counties. Usually held at either the National Conservation Training Center or Shepherd University, the seminar consists of initial speaker presentations, followed by small group break-out sessions to encourage active debate and student participation. We emphasize, in these discussions, what importance actions and policies in distant locations have on their daily lives and what they can do to take action at home. Recent topics have included: Alternative Energy (from the perspective of WV, USA, Germany and India); Global Climate Change; Islam and the modern world; China's Economic and Cultural Impacts; Democracy in South America, and immigration. We partner with the Martinsburg Rotary in implementing the World Affairs Seminar and have been fortunate in attracting speakers from a wide range of countries including Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, China, and India.
2011 World Affairs Seminar
Title: "International Environmental Careers undefinded Globalizing Nature"
Date/Time: May 6, 2011/9:00 am - 2:00 pm
Location: National Conservation Training Center - Byrd Auditorium
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Agenda:
9:00-9:15 Buses Arrive, Green Films and/or Conservation Jeopardy
9:15 Welcome introductions: Jay Slack, Chazz Printz, Lois Turco, Jim Siegel
9:20 Michelle Gadd, Fish and Wildlife Service Program Officer, Africa Programs - “Conserving African Elephants.”
9:40: Daan Vreugdenhil - “Conservation in Ethiopia”
10:00: Sharon Lynn, Senior Wildlife Inspector and Christina Kish, Supervisory Intelligence Analyst - “The Illegal International Trade in Endangered Wildlife”
10:20: Tracy Leskey, USDA Entomologist - “Global Agro-ecosystems”
10:40: Paso Pacifico - “Central American Conservation”
11:15: Lunch
11:45: Tree Planting with Phil Pannill
1:00: Jim Siegel, Division of Education and Outreach - “Youth and Careers in the Environment”
Speaker Bios:
Michelle Gadd is a Colorado native, but her path diverted from the Rockies to Africa by the time she was nineteen years old. A study abroad program in Kenya her junior year of college was intended to be a three-month tour, but extended to the better part of fourteen years! Over the years, she has gotten to know the African continent. She has driven from Nairobi to Cape Town twice and hitchhiked it once. Along the way, she collected a Bachelor’s degree from Rice University, a Masters degree in Conservation Biology from South Africa, and a PhD in Ecology from the University of California at Davis. Michelle has worked on projects throughout East and Southern Africa on topics ranging from frogs to elephants, in ecosystems from the Congo rainforest to the Kalahari Desert. Her formal research and subsequent employment in Africa focused on wildlife outside of protected areas and the impact of human land uses on biodiversity. Her master’s degree was on elephant feeding ecology and elephant impact on woodlands in South Africa. Her doctoral research was on elephant ecology and conflict with people in rangelands in Kenya and Botswana. Although the vast majority of Africa’s elephants are outside of protected areas, most previous elephant research took place within the artificial constructs of national parks. Michelle’s dissertation research was conducted wholly outside of protected areas, in areas where elephants are locally abundant and cattle production is the predominant land use. She examined how elephants and cattle compete for resources and whether cattle-keeping people are willing to continue to share their land with elephants in the future. Since 2005, she has worked at the US Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters in Washington, DC, as one of two people responsible for administering US Conservation Acts in 37 African countries. She currently oversees the African Elephant Conservation program (approximately $2 million per year) and the African Rhino Conservation program (about $1 million per year).
Tracy Leskey is a research entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, WV. She received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts and is an expert on the threats posed by the invasive brown marmorated stink bug. She will be speaking on living in an international global ecosystem.
Dr. Ir. Daan Vreugdenhil, Director and co-owner of the World Institute for Conservation & Environment, WICE, spent a lifetime dedicated to the conservation of nature and the environment. He graduated with high honors in vegetation science, animal population ecology and natural resources management and has a PhD in Protected Areas planning and Monitoring. Since he was IYF Projects Officer in 1969 and represented the youth delegation to the European Conservation Year, 1970, his conservation career now spans four decades, during which he has worked in a variety of international and national organisations in both the public and the private sectors. His work in both tropical and temperate regions include experience in a variety of fields: multi-disciplinary management and planning of natural resources, seas and marine coasts (incl. scuba diving reconnaissance), multiple-use fresh-water systems, forest ecosystems, environmental impact assessments, forest cover and ecosystem mapping as well as operating GIS, environmental monitoring systems and databases. He has been appointed member of the IUCN Commission on National Parks and Protected areas. He combines both vegetation and animal ecology for both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and has become an expert on climate change.
His career started when he became project officer for the International Youth Federation for Environmental Studies and conservation during the European Conservation Year 1970. After finishing his studies, he became a forestry officer with FAO, participating in projects in South America and Africa in 1974. Upon return to the Netherlands in 1979, he worked himself up to the level of senior administrator with the Netherlands' Ministry of Works and Water (Rijkswaterstaat is the Dutch equivalent of the USA Corps of Engineers), where he was responsible for three different integrated programs over a period of 10 years: (1) the management of Dutch part of the North Sea Coastal zone, (2) the Reorganization of the Dutch National Water Defence Research and Monitoring Program and (3) the Maintenance Program of the civil works infrastructure of the Dutch fresh watersystem, involving an annual budget responsibility of about €150,000,000, which included an annual budget of €30,000,000 for research, monitoring and the ecological recovery of the River Rhine. In the mid 80s the Dutch Government became very concerned about the impact of Sea level rise, as 50% of the Netherlands lies below sea level. As senior administrator aforementioned institution, he initiated the nation's climate change vulnerability research program. He was part of the national disaster planning team and lead the national Sandoz disaster recovery team, after one of the largest chemical disasters in European history killed all life in the Rhine River between Switzerland and the North Sea.
In 1990, he returned to the international sphere as Chief of the Natural Resources Management Unit at DHV-Consultants, for which he developed and led projects (since 1990) in Eastern Europe, Asia and Costa Rica. In 1992, he joined the Inter American Development Bank as an environmental specialist with responsibility for Panamá and Belize. In 1989, he founded the forebear of the World Institute for Conservation and Environment, at first to provide ecotourism services in support of conservation, which in 1995, expended to integral conservation support, when Dr. Vreugdenhil became its full time director.
Christina Kish is a Supervisory Intelligence Analyst for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She has worked 17 years in law enforcement much of it overseas including working in Australia, Columbia, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Spain, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Tanzania, and New Zealand.
Paso Pacifico envisions a Central America where well-managed conservation areas are connected by viable biological corridors that span from ridge to reef, including restored tropical dry forests and marine protected areas.
Through programs informed by the most cutting-edge conservation science and implemented through close cooperation with local communities, Paso Pacifico is making leaps for ecosystem conservation. By rebuilding forests and connecting ecosystems from land to sea, we are actively combating climate change and saving wildlife, such as endangered sea turtle, spider monkey, and yellow-naped parrot species.
Since 2005, Paso Pacifico has been working landowners and local communities to empower citizens to develop more sustainable livelihoods in eco-tourism, fishing, agriculture, and natural resource management; advances women and children as environmental leaders; and develops strong, collaborative relationships with private landowners and the private sector. With our holistic, forward-thinking approach, Paso Pacifico is making connections for conservation.
At present, our efforts are focused in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, second only to Haiti. Insufficient economic resources and a challenging political history have put pressure on the nation’s fragile ecosystems, making restoration and conservation in Nicaragua a priority for Paso Pacifico’s efforts in Central America. Paso Pacifico’s current work specifically targets the Paso del Istmo, located along the 12-mile-wide isthmus between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean. This narrow passageway has historically served as a land bridge for wildlife migrating between North and South America. In recent decades, however, irresponsible land development and rapidly increasing international investments have had serious consequences for the region’s climate, forests, and wildlife.
Liza Gonzale has been a leading conservationist in Nicaragua for over a decade. As an ecologist trained at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, she has worked in varying capacities for non-governmental organizations, on community-based conservation projects and in leadership positions within the Nicaraguan ministry of the environment. In recent years she was director of the National Protected Areas System, overseeing the management of 76 protected areas and also served as the Director of the Biodiversity Program, an agency charged with evaluating and protecting the nation’s biodiversity. Most recently, González served as a consultant to the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor project developing strategies for corridor implementation.
