Archives: Profiles
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Callie Broaddus
Callie Broaddus is founder and executive director of Reserva: The Youth Land Trust, which empowers young people to help protect threatened species and habitats through conservation, education, and storytelling. Reserva’s Dracula Youth Reserve in Ecuador is said to be the world’s first, entirely youth-funded reserve. Broaddus is a member of the Rainforest Trust Council, the…
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Longleaf Pines
Longleaf pine forests once spanned 90 million acres of the southeast United States. Early colonists relied heavily on the pines as materials for shipbuilding: the trees’ tall, sturdy, and straight trunks being the perfect material for ship masts, and their resin was used as tar. By 1970, only 3% of the original forests remained. Many…
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Jesse Wimberley
Jesse Wimberley is a fourth-generation landowner and burner from Moore County, North Carolina. For the past 35 years, he has been engaged in restoring his family’s 1870 home and longleaf forestlands. Part of his restoration efforts include bringing together neighbors and the local community in returning fire to the landscape. As a result, Wimberley has…
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Jessie Schillaci
Jessie Schillaci is the red-cockaded woodpecker program manager at Fort Liberty Endangered Species Branch. Her 19 years monitoring RCWs on Fort Liberty Military Installation have helped to promote a broader understanding of the compatibility of military training and ecosystem management in this unique fire-driven system. She contributes to North Carolina Sandhills Conservation Partnership efforts, citizen…
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Reintroductions
The process of releasing a species back into its natural habitat, after its population has suffered significant declines or local extinction, is called reintroduction. The methods are often very hands-on: scientists either breed captive populations from surviving individuals, or caretakers move wild individuals from places where they still thrive to a new location. Once there,…
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Wetlands
A wetland is defined as an ecosystem in which the soil is saturated with water, or flooded for at least part of the year. From coastal mangroves and salt marshes to inland bogs and river basins, wetlands are home to unique species assemblages and serve as critical habitats for migratory birds. They also perform vital…
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Ecosystem Engineers
Any species that extensively shapes its physical environment, creating new habitat for other species in the process, is called an ecosystem engineer. Examples include beavers, whose dams form wetlands upstream; American alligators, whose burrows serve as drinking water sources and hiding places for other animals; and coral, whose massive reefs serve as literal bedrock for…
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Dr. Roisin Campbell-Palmer
Roisin Campbell-Palmer is the head of restoration at the Beaver Trust. She has worked with beavers for more than 15 years, focusing on species restoration, translocation, mitigation, and animal welfare. This active field work and ongoing research have helped inform the wider restoration of beavers in Great Britain, particularly in developing and implementing practical management…
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Richard Brazier
Richard Brazier is professor of earth surface processes and director of the Centre for Resilience in Environment, Water, and Waste (CREWW) at the University of Exeter, UK. Brazier has pioneered the field of landscape restoration science, building an understanding of the structures of landscapes and ecosystems and how they interact with hydrological, ecological, geomorpholological, soil,…
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Keystone Species
Ecosystems are made up of hundreds—often thousands—of plant and animal species in constant interaction. The relationships between these species and their environment take many shapes: predators hunting and feeding on prey, animals distributing seeds or other nutrients, and even ‘engineers’ that modify the landscape around them. Over decades of study, ecologists have learned that the…
