Habitat loss in the West and what people can do about it will be addressed by CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Sharon Collinge as part of the Chancellor's Community Lecture Series on Wednesday, Jan. 15.
Her talk will be from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Chautauqua Community House at 900 Baseline Road in Boulder and is free and open to the public. No reservations are required.
"Reversing the Trend of Habitat Loss in the West: The Uncertain Promise of Ecological Restoration" is the fourth of eight public lectures being presented by University of Colorado at Boulder faculty on the theme "Healing the West: Remedy, Repair, Restoration, Mitigation."
The series is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Office of the Chancellor, the CU-Boulder Center of the American West and the Colorado Chautauqua Association.
Ecological restoration is gaining momentum among ecologists and environmentalists as a hopeful remedy for degraded landscapes, according to Collinge, an assistant professor of environmental, population and organismic biology and environmental studies.
Her lecture will address the following questions: Should we restore native ecosystems? Or are our human-made landscapes of different, but equal, value? Can we restore native ecosystems? Or is restoration an "uncertain promise," given the complex structure and function of native ecosystems?
Another focus will be whether society will restore native ecosystems.Ìý
Collinge will address whether citizens of the American West have the legal requirements, financial incentives and political motivation to engage in this process.
Collinge's research focuses on grassland ecosystems of the American West and integrates conservation biology, restoration ecology and landscape ecology to examine how changing landscapes affect plant and animal movements and population dynamics. Currently, she is examining plant communities and the effects of grassland fragmentation on plague dynamics in prairie dogs.
She earned a doctorate in landscape ecology from Harvard University in 1995.
Following the Jan. 15 lecture, the series will continue from February to May on the first Wednesday of every month. The remaining lectures will feature CU-Boulder faculty members from disciplines including French and Italian, biology, environmental studies, environmental engineering, English and history.
For information call the CU-Boulder Office of Community Affairs at (303) 492-7084. A complete schedule of lectures is posted at and .