Speaker Series
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To cover the costs of speaker honoraria and increasing expenses, we request that nonmembers make a voluntary donation of $5. Nonmembers can attend the programs free if they take advantage of our discounted six-month membership of $15 for joining that evening. As always, GGAS members are welcome to attend presentations in Berkeley and San Francisco free of charge.
Golden Gate Park: A Stroll Through History
with Heath Massey
San Francisco: Thursday, January 19, 2012—7 p.m. refreshments, 7:30 program
Many dedicated naturalists have left memorable footprints in Golden Gate Park over the years.
Monterey cypress windbreak created after the sand dunes were stabilized. Photo; Heath Massey
William Hammond Hall, the park’s first superintendent, applied principles of natural plant succession to stabilize the sand dunes that underlie the park. John McLaren, longtime park superintendent and experimental horticulturalist, arrived at the great variety of plants in the park through trial and error. Dr. Luis Baptista, curator of ornithology and mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences, studied the vocalizations of the park’s White-crowned Sparrows and memorably whistled their calls at scientific meetings. Heath Massey will recount the stories of these and other fascinating individuals who helped chart the natural history of this remarkable park.
Heath Massey lives in San Francisco and is a professor of landscape architecture at U.C. Davis, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1990. She is a licensed landscape architect and a landscape historian and is the author of Picturing California’s Other Landscape: The Great Central Valley (Heyday, 1999) and Melodramatic Landscapes: Urban Parks in the Nineteenth Century (University of Virginia, 2009). Her blog on the park, Golden Gate Park: Views From the Thicket, can be found at http://fromthethicket.wordpress.com.
Human Population and Wildlife Impacts
with John Seager
Berkeley: Thursday, February 16, 2012 —7 p.m. refreshments, 7:30 program
A Great Indian Adjutant Stork witnessing the destruction of its habitat in Guwahati City, India - Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar, Courtesy of Photoshare
In the wake of the world’s population reaching seven billion, John Seager will share his insights on the causes of rapid population growth, its impacts on wildlife, and our options to deal with this challenge. Population Connection (www.popconnect.org) is the national grassroots organization that educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by the Earth’s resources. The organization focuses on achieving global population stabilization through universal awareness and access to voluntary family planning together with the full empowerment of women.
John Seager, president and CEO of Population Connection, joined the organization in 1996. He previously served in the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration and was chief of staff for former U.S. Representative Peter H. Kostmayer (D-PA), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs and Interior committees. A graduate of Trinity College with a B.A. in political science, John travels throughout the country making presentations on global population growth. His many articles on population address such topics as the links to poverty and the concern about population decline in some highly developed nations.