Avian Education Program Speaker: Dr. Amanda Rodewald

Strategic Conservation in An Uncertain World: It Takes A Village

Amanda Rodewald

Ecologist and conservation biologist Amanda Rodewald will give a free seminar March 16 on “Strategic Conservation in an Uncertain World.” Rodewald is a professor of ornithology at Cornell University and senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She serves on the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The seminar, subtitled “It Takes a Village,” will be held at 5 p.m. at 112 Forest Resources Building on the University Park campus and can also be viewed on Zoom. It is sponsored by The Arboretum at Penn State’s Avian Education Program.

The seminar will also be available live via Zoom. To participate via Zoom, please register at https://psu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_z88Vqm3KRWC_TiNcu0A5VQ.

Rodewald believes interdisciplinary approaches to research and conservation are the key to success and will discuss ways to conserve biodiversity in ways that benefit both people and the environment. An example is shade-grown coffee, where the trees provide habitat for birds and the environment, the birds provide benefits to the plants, and the people gain economic benefits through sustainably grown coffee.

Rodewald received her Ph.D. in ecology from Penn State and spent 13 years as a professor at Ohio State University before joining Cornell in 2013. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Ornithological Society.

At Cornell, she leads an interdisciplinary research program that addresses conservation and socio-ecological challenges in temperate and tropical ecosystems.