La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science

The structure was the cornerstone of a UCLA conservation science center.

The UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science invites applications for its 2018 Postdoctoral Fellowship in California Conservation Science. We seek a postdoctoral scholar who conducts innovative biological research to work with the La Kretz Center and our partner agencies to achieve outcomes that will direct and lead California conservation efforts.

Some ecologists believe our best chance to preserve biodiversity is to introduce non-native species to cities—but others warn of unintended consequences. Brad Shaffer and Ursula Heise argue for cities as biodiversity havens for endangered species.

New Malibu facility to improve wildlife researchers’ efforts

Brad Shaffer and Evan McCartney-Melstad are featured in the August 2018 podcast from the journal Heredity, which broadcasts interviews with the people behind the journal, the science and a digest of breaking news. The focus of the podcast is the application of new genomic methods to understudied organisms, including a recent study published by Shaffer and...

Research by La Kretz Postdoc Gary Bucciarelli and others finds that the crayfish disrupt native predators that eat mosquito larvae

"[W]hat if we deliberately offered sanctuary to endangered species in our cities—those that are native, of course, but also those that are not?" - Ursula Heise, in CityLab.

"Parrots are not uncommon around Los Angeles. More than a dozen different species have established wild populations in the area, descendants of pet birds that escaped at some point and managed to make a home for themselves in some part of the sprawling metropolis," Ursula Heise writes in Elemental.

Brad Shaffer, a biology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, notes that cities not only destroy habitat, but also create new living spaces for animals and plants. (Wired)

The shallow depths of ponds all across Europe used to be home to amphibians of all shapes and sizes. Now, these amphibians are threatened by human activities such as agricultural expansion, and the introduction of invasive species. While invasive species can be a threat to native biota because of competition, predation and infection, closely related...

La Kretz Center Director Brad Shaffer and other UCLA researchers meet with California Assemblyman Richard Bloom to discuss how how conservation genomics could help California modernize its approach to natural resource management.

UCLA La Kretz Center’s 9th Annual Lecture One of the great challenges in conservation biology is discovering ‘what was natural’ before human impacts. This problem is especially pressing in marine systems where biological monitoring and other records are brief or lacking. Dr. Susan Kidwell has been tackling this problem in our Southern California marine ecosystems...