Lecture #15: Monitoring the Vital Signs of America’s National Parks
January 8, 5:00-6:00pm Vancouver time (Jan 9, 9:00-10:00am, Beijing Time)
RSVP for more details: info.afrc@ubc.ca
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Gary E. Davis
USNPS, Ret.
Co-editor, The Photographer’s Frame
Parks Stewardship Forum
Dr. Gary Davis has been studying nature and people since he joined National Park Services as a national park ranger, research scientist, ocean explorer-aquanaut, and photographer. He co-edits The Photographer’s Frame, a regular visual-essay feature of Parks Stewardship Forum, a journal of the University of California Berkeley’s Parks, People and Biodiversity Institute and the George Wright Society. Gary explored and documented the ecological health of America’s national parks by developing protocols for measuring park vital signs, and demonstrated the positive effects of protecting marine life, making national parks safer for fish.
During his career of ecological research in national parks, from the Virgin Islands and South Florida’s Everglades, Dry Tortugas, and Biscayne national parks to California’s Channel Islands National Park, he realized that translating science into illustrated stories was critical to gain support for effective conservation. This epiphany in 2007 motivated his endeavors of world travel with National Geographic Society explorers and photographers to learn the art of visual essays.
Recently, he has served on the boards of the Western National Parks Association and the SeaDoc Society at the University of California, Davis, Wildlife Health Center. He has also advised the U. S. Departments of Commerce and Interior as a member of the Marine Protected Area Federal Advisory Committee and of the National Park System Advisory Board’s Science Committee. Formerly, Gary held a variety of board positions with the George Wright Society including President, Vice President, and Treasurer.