La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science

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Brad Shaffer & Rachel Blakey quoted in Pepperdine Graphic: Funding Biodiversity Research Provides More Understanding Amid Climate Change Effects

“If you buy into the notion that having biodiversity around you is good for people, then we have to understand enough of the ecology and the biology of the relevant biodiversity in the area to be able to keep it with us,” said H. Bradley Shaffer, distinguished professor in UCLA’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department and professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

la kretz postdocs partner with national park service on mountain lion study

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The CCGP in the UCLA Daily Bruin: UCLA La Kretz Center researchers take lead in genetics study of California’s native species

UCLA researchers are taking the lead in the California Conservation Genomics Project, a state-funded project led by academic researchers aiming to gather genetic information on species native to California. The project is a collaborative effort between scientists affiliated with all 10 UC campuses, as well as members of many agencies. The researchers are working together to gather and record the genomic data of over 150 different species.

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Brad Shaffer: LA Times: Geneticists are advancing the cause of conservation with a new breed of sanctuary

“My goal is to map glaring hot spots of genetic diversity,” said Brad Shaffer, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA who has devoted more than a decade to the cause of conserving assemblages of life forms with the greatest likelihood of adapting to future climate conditions. Now, as director of UCLA’s La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, he leads a team of 114 researchers drawn from all 10 University of California campuses that is creating the most comprehensive genomic dataset of native species ever assembled for conservation science.

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