Nature on the Edge, Speaker: Bruce Byers

Nature on the Edge: Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve

Speaker: Bruce Byers.    Zoom Registration

Serpentine outcrop with poppies near Rock Springs, Mount Tamalpais

Native plant conservation was part of the founding vision of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program and its world network of biosphere reserves in 1971. The Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve, which includes Marin Country, was established in 1988 to represent the California Floristic Province in the global network. It is the largest, most populous, and perhaps most complicated of the twenty-eight US biosphere reserves, with fascinating success stories to tell and lessons to teach. This talk will feature highlights from the book Nature on the Edge regarding the history of the Golden Gate Biosphere Region, the heroes/heroines who fought to conserve its biodiversity over more than a century, and will give a few examples of native plant research and restoration going on now. Examples will include manzanitas and their relationship to serpentine soils; fire ecology of bishop pine at Point Reyes; restoration of native sand dune vegetation at Lobos Creek in San Francisco; and conservation and restoration of lupines at San Bruno Mountain and Sweeney Ridge as larval host plants for the endangered Mission Blue butterfly.

Deerweed (Acmispon glaber) at Lobos Creek dune restoration site,
larval host plant of extinct Xerces Blue butterfly

Bruce A. Byers is an ecologist, writer and international environmental consultant whose work aims to inform and inspire a more ecologically sustainable, equitable, and resilient relationship between humans and our home planet. His research, writing, and consulting has taken him to more than forty countries. Bruce is the author of The View from Cascade Head: Lessons for the Biosphere from the Oregon Coast, published in 2020, and Nature on the Edge: Lessons for the Biosphere from the California Coast, published in 2024. These books of interdisciplinary creative nonfiction essays explore three internationally recognized biosphere reserves on the US Pacific Coast—Golden Gate, Channel Islands, and Cascade Head—from ecological, evolutionary, cultural, political, and philosophical perspectives. Bruce’s blog, Ecologia, with almost 150 entries since 2011, describes his travel, research, consulting, and ecological adventures in the US and around the world. See more at https://www.brucebyersconsulting.com/