La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science

"[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...

At the 2017 annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, La Kretz Postdoc Alex Pivovaroff was the co-recipient of the Plant, Cell & Environment Award for the best oral presentation by a postdocotoral scholar in the Plant Physiological Ecology Section. The title of her talk was “In the heat of the moment: Diurnal patterns...

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 this year’s grant recipients for our competitive research awards. Our ten awardees, working on projects ranging from urban lizards to invasive algae to endangered tricolored blackbirds, each contribute to our...

It has long been established that even the most innocuous of human activities can impact animal behavior. From birds mimicking phone ringtones to grins triggering aggressive responses from primates, people often have a greater impact on animal behavior than they realize. Now, a recently published UCLA study on local western fence lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis) has...

Brad Shaffer, La Kretz Center Director, discusses how climate change will affect biodiversity in two of the greatest cities in the world, Los Angeles and Beijing.

High in the San Jacinto Mountains about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, a secret slithers. Uncovering it takes watchful eyes, long nights and perseverance. But for UCLA’s Jesse Grismer, the opportunity to track down a rare Southern rubber boa has been worth the wait. His search for the elusive creature wasn’t just a scavenger hunt...

Say goodbye to our old (and definitely on its last legs) garage. On September 29, the La Kretz Center broke ground for a new accessory structure at its Field Station in the Santa Monica Mountains. The new building will provide us with 1300 square feet of dedicated research space, overnight accommodations for field researchers, and...