The Nature Conservancy - Science Council

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Science Council Charter

For more on The Nature Conservancy Science Council and how it informs our conservation work, download and read the science council charter.

The Nature Conservancy uses a science-based conservation approach to achieve our mission. As such, The Conservancy relies on insights and knowledge from the world of science to make our conservation work more effective. To ensure that The Nature Conservancy’s Board of Directors has access to good scientific advice, the Board membership includes several highly regarded scientists. In addition, to strengthen our ties to academic and public agency scientists globally, in September of 2005 the Board created the Science Council.

Since 2005, the Science Council has included Board scientists as well as other external experts from diverse disciplines, perspectives, experiences, and geographies. Their expertise has included marine conservation, ecology, economics, U.S. federal conservation policy, global climate change, and ecological genetics, among other research topics.

The creation of and continued support for the Science Council reflects the desire of the Board and Conservancy leadership to have access to the best science and scientists in areas critical to future conservation efforts. It also emphasizes the important role science plays in the Conservancy’s conservation approach.

Please see the Science Council Charter for more details about the governance of the Council.

Science Council Members

Current Science Council members include Board scientists Joel Cohen, William Murdoch, and Gretchen Daily. These scientists are joined by Mary Ruckelshuas and Steve Polasky. Joel Cohen and William Murdoch are co-chairs of the Council.

Joel Cohen, Science Council co-chair
Joel Cohen is a mathematical biologist at The Rockefeller University and Colombia University. His research combines mathematical tools with observation of concrete problems in demography, epidemiology, and ecology to better understand populations. He focuses on both human and non-human communities. In human research, for example, his lab has developed a model to help encourage good household management to help prevent the spread of the highly infectious Chagas disease. One example of his non-human research is the design of a food web that shows food energy and of chemical and biological toxins.

William Murdoch, Science Council co-chair
William Murdoch is a population ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His main research interests are in the mechanisms that maintain stability of interacting consumer and resource populations when the consumer keeps the resource population far below the level set by its resources. He works in two experimental systems one in California on the California red scale which is a citrus insect pest, and the other system consists of the freshwater zooplankton, Daphnia, and its food supply, single-celled algae. With colleagues he has also been developing general theory for the dynamics of insect parasitoids and hosts and predators and prey.

Gretchen Daily
Gretchen Daily is an ecologist by training and a professor in Biological Sciences at Stanford University, but her research and interest extend well beyond ecology including finance, economics, and policy. Her primary scientific efforts concern the future course of extinction, the resulting changes in ecosystem services delivery, and the exploration of novel opportunities for the conservation of biodiversity. She collaborates with economists, legal scholars, mathematicians, and leaders in non-government organizations and the private and public world to investigate new conservation finance mechanisms and policy options to expand global conservation efforts.

Stephen Polasky Steve Polasky
Steve Polasky is a professor of ecological and environmental economics at the University of Minnesota. His research interests span a range of topics including biodiversity conservation biodiversity conservation, integrating ecological and economic analysis, ecosystem services, renewable energy, environmental regulation, endangered species, and common property resources. He also uses game-theoretic models to study resource extraction. Dr. Polasky also teaches are range of courses including ones on applied game theory, natural resource economics, science and policy of global environmental change, economics of the environment, environment and development economics, among others.

Mary Ruckelshaus
Mark Ruckelshaus is a fisheries research biologist at NOAA and a population biologist by training. Her research interests focus on marine and andadromous species particularly the population and evolutionary dynamics of seagrasses, marine reserve design, and developing viability criteria for salmonids. She currently is the lead of the salmon risk team listed under the Endangered Species Act. She and her team work to develop quantitative methods to identify demographically isolated species populations, to determine viability criteria, and to evaluate the effects of harvest, habitat, and hatchery management practices as well as natural environmental variation on salmon populations.

How the Science Council Works

The Science Council meets in person four times annually in conjunction with the meetings of the Board of Directors. Whenever possible, the Council meetings are held the day before the Board meetings to give the Science Council a chance to learn about Conservancy science: what is being done, what needs more support, and what is important to inform Board decision-making.

The Science Council works with the Director of Conservation Science and Chief Scientist, Peter Kareiva, to develop an agenda for each meeting; an agenda which will give the Council a chance to learn about and address critical science issues and to help advise on conservation priorities and on improvements in Conservancy strategies and practices.
The agendas for these meetings vary depending on focal and salient topics, and the Council welcomes participation at meetings from scientists working at all scales - local, place-based scientists to global team scientists – appropriate to a particular topic.

The Council serves the essential, valuable function of tying Conservancy work to that of the broader scientific community as well as providing a direct, two-way channel of communication between the Board and TNC scientists and science programs.

For more details on Science Council activities please use the “Activities” link in the left hand navigation bar.