When: Thursday, April 24th, 12:45 - 2pm.

Where: Vermont Law and Graduate School Multicultural Center at 164 Chelsea Street,
South Royalton, VT 05068. Online via Zoom webinar and recording. RSVP here to receive the online meeting link and information to join us in person.  

Description: Biodiversity loss and climate change are considered the two existential crises threatening planetary life, yet biodiversity is almost completely ignored compared to the attention afforded to climate change.

The United States is the only country not to have ratified the United Nations Treaty on Biodiversity, and the only country in the developed world not to have a National Biodiversity Strategy. Without such a strategy, Federal and State natural resource agencies have been given carte blanche to address the biodiversity crisis as they wish, allowing them to greenwash management actions that detrimentally impact biodiversity.

In his upcoming talk, conservation biologist Rick Enser will share the importance of biodiversity, unpack the ways that the term is frequently co-opted and abused, and investigate how misleadingly-named state Wildlife Action Plans are designed to set “biodiversity” conservation priorities that primarily focus on commodity-driven management actions, like logging to create early successional habitats to increase populations of game animals.

Rick Enser is a consulting conservation biologist who came to Vermont after 28 years as the Coordinator of the Rhode Island Natural Heritage Program. He has extensive experience in biological inventory and conservation planning, has participated in Endangered Species recovery efforts, authored the first Rhode Island Breeding Bird Atlas, and lectured extensively on endangered species and biodiversity issues.