Call for Nominations for 2015 SCB Service Awards

Deadline to apply is 1 December 2015

SCB is accepting nominations now through 1 December for 2015 SCB Service Awards!
Award winners will be recognized in front of their peers at SCB's 2015 International Congress for Conservation Biology and European Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB-ECCB) in Montpellier, France (2-6 August 2015).

From early career scientists to well-known conservationists, SCB Service Awards honor those whose commitment to conservation inspires others to succeed and whose outstanding achievements in the field contribute to lasting conservation success.

Past winners include Al Gore, Georgina Mace, David Attenborough, Phoebe Barnard, Eleanor Sterling and dozens of others who have made extraordinary contributions to conservation biology and the preservation of Earth's biodiversity. 

SCB will recognize winners from the following award categories at ICCB-ECCB 2015:

    Edward T. La Roe III Memorial Award (one winner)
    Distinguished Service Awards
    Early Career Conservationist Awards

Learn about each award type and submit your nomination(s) on the SCB 2015 Service Awards page of the SCB website. Non members are eligible to win an award, but you must be a member to make a nomination. Self-nominations are accepted. All nominations must include at least two letters of support.

Questions? E-mail Awards Committee Chair Carolyn Lundquist. 

SCB President Rodrigo Medellin presents Eleanor Sterling, (top left), James Watson (top right), Lucas Joppa (bottom left) and Bill Sutherland with SCB Service Awards at ICCB 2013 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Short report on IPBES events, in conjunction with SCB and ICCB-ECCB 2015

IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is a major initiative of governments to copy the success of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) in the topics of biodiversity and ecosystem services. These are in the focus of conservation biology, and of SCB as well. Our society was involved into the development of IPBES from the very beginning, and still active stakeholder to IPBES. After more than a year of development IPBES get to more visible activities, like the recent meetings on “Guide on production and integration of assessments from and across all scales”, and the “Regional scoping for a set of regional and subregional assessments”. Both deliverables had meeting in Paris, 13-16 August for the Guide, and 17-22 August for the Regional scoping. The Regional scoping is of extreme importance for the academic and non-academic communities, as it defines what regional assessments will be, which are the regions, what are the major policy questions to be addressed, etc. Nearly a hundred experts were involved into the scoping meeting, and many hundreds from around the globe will work in the assessments, including natural and social scientists, and indigeneous and local knowledge holders.

At the recent meeting Piero Visconti, co-chair of ICCB-ECCB 2015 Scientific Committee, Georgina Mace SCB past president and myself SCB-Europe president were invited to the scoping meeting in Paris. In addition, Salvatore Arico from the host organisation (UNESCO), past board member of SCB-Europe was present. Piero and myself initiated discussions with a number of experts about ICCB. We beleive that ICCB can be the best forum to present the first outputs of IPBES to the wide conservation community of c. 2000 participants in Montpellier. Anne Larigauderie, IPBES executive secretary, will give a plenary talk at the congress, and other activities on IPBES are also under planning.

Be prepared – ICCB-ECCB 2015 is approaching! 

Call for symposia is out (http://iccb-eccb2015.org/).

ICCB-ECCB 2015 poster presented at IPBES meeting, with Anne and myself.

András Báldi

BoG meeting in California

The Board of Governors of SCB held its meeting on 19-20 July at the University of California at Berkeley. As president of the Europe Section (which has a Board of Directors, BoD  – just to clarify terminologyJ), I am a member of the SCB BoG. The meeting was scheduled just after the first ever North American Congress of Conservation Biology (http://www.scbnacongress.org/), which was a great success.

The SCB BoG meeting started with a meeting of section presidents, where we agreed that further internationalisation of SCB is the proper strategy for the society to become a real „global community of conservation professionals”. I am gladly reporting that Paul Beier, president of the society, and presidents of the North American section Dominick DellaSala and the African section Edward Mwavu will be present at the 3rd ECCB in Glasgow. This will provide a great opportunity to learn more on SCB beyond Europe.

András Báldi

SCB-ES President

András Báldi, SCB Europe Section President waiting for the BoG meeting to kick off