Hello anyone interested in conservation!

Allow us to introduce the Conservation Discussion Group (CDG)! We meet every other week on Tuesdays to discuss any and all things conservation-related. We invite speakers and participants from many departments across UBC, and from inside and outside academia, to try to broaden our exposure to conservation ideas and practices. To give you an idea of conservation topics, last year we introduced the CDG/Conservation Science Initiative Spotlight series (which we plan to bring back) and addressed anti-racism in ocean sciences, and conservation across many scales of research. More details about past meetings are available on our website: https://zoology.ubc.ca/conservation/

This year, CDG will start with meeting by Zoom, but when conditions allow, we’ll have hybrid meetings to accommodate Zoom participants and those who want to meet in person! Meetings will be every other Tuesday from 3-4pm, starting with a welcome session next Tuesday September 14th. We’ll send out a Zoom link later in the week to the CDG listserv – you can subscribe by sending a message with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line to ‘conservation-request@zoology.ubc.ca‘.

What are some potential discussion topics this term? We hope to have a month focused on networking, bringing in researchers outside UBC, and we hope to discuss the effects of current events (particularly COVID-19 and its impacts) on conservation. But these are only a few ideas… Come join us next week in our welcome session to help shape our themes!

We look forward to meeting you and hearing your thoughts. Please share this introductory message throughout your networks, and invite others!

Cheers,

CDG facilitators (Angela Brennan, Gaurav Singh-Varma, Jared Grummer, Kaleigh Davis, Chelsea Gowton and Fiona Beaty)