ISSN: 1938-7024 Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Network of Conservation Educators & Practitioners LESSONS IN CONSERVATION VOLUME 9 STUDIO JANUARY 2019 ISSUE Network of Conservation Educators & Practitioners Lessons in Conservation is the official journal of the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP)—a collaborative project of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) at the American Museum of Natural History—and is published as issues become available. Teaching and learning modules presented here in Lessons in Conservation are available in modifiable form for teachers on the NCEP website (ncep.amnh.org). All materials are distributed free of charge. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Museum of Natural History or the funders of this project. All components of a module (Syntheses, Exercises, and Case Studies) have been peer-reviewed and approved for publication by NCEP. Editors: Production team: Kristin Douglas Ana L. Porzecanski NCEP Production and Outreach Coordinator CBC and NCEP Director Suzanne Macey Nadav Gazit NCEP Manager CBC and NCEP Visual Creative and Research Assistant Kimberley Landrigan CBC Capacity Development Specialist Stefanie Siller NCEP Intern Lessons in Conservation is available online at: ncep.amnh.org/linc All reproduction or distribution must provide full citation of the original work and provide a copyright notice as follows: “Copyright 2019, by the authors of the material and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation of the American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved.” Cover photo: El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico Credit: NASA Journal illustrations obtained from the American Museum of Natural History’s library: images.library.amnh.org/digital/ LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Reader, Welcome to Lessons in Conservation, the official journal of the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP), a collaborative project of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) at the American Museum of Natural History. This journal aims to introduce NCEP teaching and learning resources— or modules—to a broad audience. Our modules are designed to support undergraduate and professional level education on a variety of conservation topics and are available for free on our website (ncep.amnh.org). In this issue, we present a collection of case studies and exercises developed by NCEP Conservation Teaching and Learning Studio participants. NCEP Studios aim to create a “community of practice” by bringing together individuals and teams of conservation educators to train in evidence-based pedagogical approaches, exchange teaching strategies, practice new teaching techniques, and integrate these approaches by co-developing new teaching resources. Studios have convened annually since 2015 and have brought a total of 93 educators from nine countries to the museum. We are excited to feature the work of four educator and practitioner teams that attended past Studios for this ninth volume of Lessons in Conservation. In keeping with the NCEP Studio process, the resources presented here are designed to promote active learning as well as develop critical thinking skills through case studies, games, conservation decision-making exercises, and research projects. Specifically, they encourage students to grapple with the realities of “tradeoffs”—a frequent feature of real-world conservation decision-making. Please enjoy this volume of Lessons in Conservation and we’d like to remind you that all NCEP materials are meant to be modifiable for each teacher’s specific classroom or training needs. Adaptable Microsoft Word versions of these modules are available for download at ncep.amnh.org along with accompanying teaching notes, exercise solutions, presentations, and links to other relevant open educational resources. For more information on NCEP and Studios, please see this issue’s editorial, Building capacity for conservation through education: the what, how, why, & who of the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners. If you are interested in becoming further involved or participating in future Studios, please contact us at [email protected]. We are grateful to many people across the CBC for their contributions to the development of Lessons in Conservation. Please see the back cover for a full acknowledgment of the organizations, institutions, and individuals that have supported the authors’ participation in an NCEP Studio and the module creation process. Remember to visit our website, and we hope you’ll use these or other NCEP resources in your classroom! Kristin Douglas Suzanne Macey Co-Editor Co-Editor TABLE Building Capacity for Conservation Through Education: 5 OF The What, How, Why, & Who of the Network of Conservation CONTENTS Educators and Practitioners Kimberley Landrigan Bird Conservation Along the Lower Colorado River 10 Dawn M. Fletcher, Lauren B. Harter, Amy Leist, and Elisabeth M. Ammon Bird Conservation Along the Lower Colorado River: 29 Exploring a Complex Conservation Scenario Through Four Exercises Dawn M. Fletcher, Lauren B. Harter, Amy Leist, and Elisabeth M. Ammon Exploring the Social and Ecological Trade-offs in Tropical 38 Reforestation: A Role-Playing Exercise Matthew Fagan and Naomi Schwartz Biogeography in Conservation: Tools to Explore the Past 55 and Future of Species in a Changing World Carlos Alberto Arnillas, Sandy M. Smith, Felicity J. Ni, and Adam Martin Genetically Modified Crops and Biological Conservation on 95 Farmlands Timothy Leslie and Randa Jabbour Acknowledgments 111 Note to educators: To access teaching notes and exercise solutions for these modules, visit our website (ncep.amnh.org), register as an educator, and search for module by title. LESSONS IN CONSERVATION VOLUME 9 JANUARY 2019 EDITORIAL 5 Building Capacity for Conservation Through Education: The What, How, Why, & Who of the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners Kimberley Landrigan Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA ufficient conservation capacity—the ability to What We Teach: The Beginnings of the Network set and achieve conservation goals—is critical to meeting the environmental challenges we In the early 1990s, as a doctoral student studying a face globally as individuals, organizations, and nocturnal lemur (the aye-aye) in Madagascar, Center Ssocieties (e.g., see Fox et al. 2017, Gill et al. 2017). The for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) Jaffe Chief Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners Conservation Scientist Dr. Eleanor Sterling was inspired (NCEP) seeks to build that capacity for conservation to learn about how environmental science was taught in through evidence-based higher education and pro- the country. Madagascar was and is a widely recognized fessional development. By thinking about what is taught global hotspot for biodiversity and she was curious and how, why is it effective, as well as who is included at about how the next generation of conservation actors the table and in the classroom, we work to improve the was being trained. What she found was that Malagasy teaching and learning of conservation in universities and educators were limited by a scarcity of resources such other professional settings. The works presented in this as textbooks, and that (when available) these were volume of Lessons in Conservation are the product of often out-of-date and irrelevant to the local context. In NCEP Conservation Teaching and Learning Studios and, Madagascar, and elsewhere (e.g., Mendez et al. 2007), more broadly, of the NCEP community. Here we share there was an urgent need for up-to-date, high-quality the evolution of NCEP as a program and as a community resources for teaching and training science. If the to outline how we arrived at Studios and the resources scientific community wanted to support conservation presented here, why they matter, and where they are into the future, it needed to ask some important headed in the future. questions: What training does the next generation of conservation educators and practitioners need? What skills? Will they be effective? LESSONS IN CONSERVATION VOLUME 9 JANUARY 2019 6 EDITORIAL Dr. Sterling, her CBC colleague Dr. Nora Bynum, and Dr. what we teach but also how it is taught. We found many James Gibbs (of the State University of New York, College of our colleagues at home and abroad, while experts in of Environmental Science and Forestry) created the their field, had received little or no training in pedagogy yet Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners— were being asked to teach hundreds, even thousands, of or NCEP—in 2000 to meet this capacity challenge. students over the course of their careers. Valuable skills With a small team based at the American Museum of such as critical thinking, data analysis, collaborative Natural History (AMNH), the project began by creating problem solving, and professional communication were a suite of open and active educational materials on a regarded as essential for professional conservation variety of conservation topics, leveraging the expertise practice (e.g., Kroll 2007) but not explicitly addressed of CBC, AMNH, and other scientists by enlisting them in most courses and curricula. Academic preparation in as authors and reviewers. The resulting “modules” conservation science remains