‘Rewilding’ advocate to speak today

Conservation biologist Michael Soule, a leading proponent of wilderness protection and restoration, will speak Wednesday, Nov. 18.

His free public lecture, “Rewilding: The Theory of Regional Wildlands Networks,” is scheduled at 3 p.m., 165 Bascom Hall. A reception follows in the lobby of Birge Hall.

Soule recently retired as a professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was a founder of the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Project, of which he is president. He will visit UW–Madison as a Brittingham Visiting Scholar and guest of the university’s Institute for Environmental Studies and Madison Ecology Group.

Born and raised in San Diego, Soule spent much of his youth in and around canyons, seashores, and deserts and at the San Diego Natural History Museum. He graduated from San Diego State University and earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University, where he studied population biology and evolution under Paul Ehrlich. He helped found the first university in Malawi and also taught in Samoa and at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at UC Santa Cruz in 1989.

His fieldwork has taken him to Mexico, the Adriatic, the West Indies, and Colorado. He has written and edited a variety of books on biology, conservation biology, and the social context of contemporary conservation. He has published more than 100 articles on subjects including population and evolutionary biology, population genetics, island biogeography, environmental studies, biodiversity policy, and ethics. He continues to conduct research on the genetic basis of fitness and viability in natural populations, on the impacts of “keystone” species, and on the social causes of the worldwide destruction of nature.

Soule was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is the sixth recipient of the Archie Carr Medal.

Now living in Colorado, Soule spends his time learning about the land, working with many conservation organizations, advising Ph.D. students, conducting research with a variety of collaborators, and writing about biology, ethics, and conservation.