La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science

The UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science and the UC Natural Reserve System Stunt Ranch Santa Monica Mountains Reserve are pleased to announce the 2020 recipients of our competitive research awards. The awardees, working on projects ranging from the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas to the impact of urbanization on biodiversity, each contribute...

Rachel Blakey’s research suggests fire, as it becomes more frequent and severe, poses a substantial risk to goshawks in the Sierra Nevada region.

New research casts doubt on the common assumption that plants and animals are adapted to their environments.

Red-eared sliders are the most commonly traded pet turtles in the world, but are often released into the wild by disgruntled owners when they get too big to handle. Thanks to illegal dumping, the sliders, which are native to the Central United States and Northeastern Mexico, can now be found all over the world. Their...

UCLA scientists are leading a $10 million project to help California officials make ecologically wise decisions as the state continues to confront the effects of climate change.  The California Conservation Genomics Project, which is funded by the state, will involve conservation biologists, geneticists, ecologists and climate scientists from all 10 University of California campuses, the Lawrence...

Dr. Bradley Shaffer from UCLA talks $10 million California conservation project.

UCLA scientists are leading a $10 million project to help California officials make ecologically wise decisions as the state continues to confront the effects of climate change. The California Conservation Genomics Project, which is funded by the state, will involve conservation biologists, geneticists, ecologists and climate scientists from all 10 University of California campuses, the...

“This project has the potential to revolutionize how we manage our land,” said Bradley Shaffer, who leads the project and is a UCLA distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of UCLA’s La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. “We will apply state-of-the-art techniques to California’s most pressing conservation problems and provide government agencies with the best scientific data to make informed decisions as California’s climate continues to undergo rapid change.”

In a newly published study, a team of UCLA researchers including La Kretz postdocs Justin Valliere and Gary Bucciarelli explores whether invasives show greater growth and reproductive responses to water availability compared with the native wildflowers they displace. The authors find that invasives may be more negatively impacted by drought compared with natives, but they...

John Benson is now an assistant professor with the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

California grasslands have been severely impacted by the invasion of nonnative annual grasses, which often limit restoration of this important ecosystem. La Kretz Postdoc Justin Valliere is lead author on a paper in the journal Restoration Ecology that explores the use of mowing as a restoration tool for native perennial grasslands at the Santa Rosa...