2023 Oct 19 Monthly Meeting – Naomi Fraga and Plant Conservation in Action
Plant Conservation in Action:
Utilizing research, collections, and advocacy to address the plant extinction crisis
Presenter: NAOMI FRAGA
October 19 Thursday Public Meeting via Zoom
7:15 Pre meeting chat, 7:30 pm meeting officially begins
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/98286192507?pwd=NDZ3Y3NOWXlPeDBrVk5qT0R4TjNldz09
DESCRIPTION
Threats such as mining, habitat conversion, off-highway vehicle use, cattle grazing, invasive species, climate change and catastrophic drought are degrading and eliminating habitat for numerous rare plant species that occur on public lands in the American west.
Beyond research, scientists have a number of tools available to advance conservation of rare and threatened species. Advocacy, including Endangered Species Act listing petitions, media messaging, and organizing with environmental advocates provides some of the most accessible and high value tools towards addressing critical and immediate conservation needs.
This presentation will discuss two plant species as case studies where the advocacy tool kit has either advanced conservation or is in the process of being employed to address urgent conservation issues.
- Chloropyron tecopense (Tecopa bird’s beak, Orobanchaceae),
- Eriogonum tiehmii (Tiehm’s buckwheat, Polygonaceae),
PRESENTER
This information and more is found at, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Fraga
Naomi Fraga is the Director of Conservation at the California Botanic Garden and research assistant professor of botany at Claremont Graduate University.
She has focused her career on the conservation, monitoring and habitat restoration of rare plants across California. She was awarded the 2021 Center for Biological Diversity E.O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation. In 2023, Fraga received the Peter Raven Award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. This award is given annually to a plant systematist who has made exceptional efforts at outreach to non-scientists.
Fraga grew up in California. She was an undergraduate student at California Polytechnic University, Pomona where she studied biology and botany. In 2002 she wrote a senior thesis on A Short Flora of Short Canyon, Kern County,California.[3]
Starting from 2001 she worked as a volunteer at the herbarium of the California Botanic Garden — then named “Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG)” — in Claremont, California.[1]
She undertook her master studies in botany at the Claremont Graduate University, finishing in 2005 with a thesis on A Vascular Flora of the Owens Peak Eastern Watershed, southern Sierra, Kern County, California.[3] In 2015 she earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation on Phrymaceae, California Monkeyflowers.[4]