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Keynote Speakers

NatureServe is delighted that the following keynote speakers will be speaking during Tuesday's and Wednesday's Plenary sessions and Wednesday evening following dinner. You don't want to miss out on these sessions so if you haven't registered yet for the conference - Don't Delay! Register Today!

April 15, 2008

Tuesday Morning Plenary Speaker

• Larry Orman
• Executive Director
• GreenInfo Network

Larry Orman is the Executive Director of GreenInfo Network (www.greeninfo.org), a non-profit technology consulting organization whose mission is to assist public interest organizations in the use of computer mapping and related information technology. Before founding GreenInfo Network in 1996, Larry was for 19 years the Executive Director of Greenbelt Alliance, the Bay Area's leading land conservation and urban planning non-profit organization. He has also taught advanced land use planning courses in the graduate Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, and in 2006 received a Distinguished Alumnus award from the College of Environmental Design at U.C. Berkeley.

• Amanda Jorgenson
• Executive Director
• California Native Plant Society

Amanda Jorgenson is the Executive Director of the California Native Plant Society. Amanda is a conservation biologist with a B.S. in Biology and a M.A. in Latin American Studies/Tropical Conservation and Development. Prior to CNPS, Amanda was the Ecuador Program Coordinator for four years with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), an international conservation organization based in New York. Preceding her work with WCS, Amanda was the Executive Director of Fundaci?n Natura, in Colombia. In the United States, Amanda worked as a program manager for Tropical Research and Development, Inc., an international, natural-resource-management consulting firm. She began her professional career as a staff biologist at World Wildlife Fund-US in Washington, DC.

• Kevin Hunting
• Deputy Director of Regional Operations
• CA Dept of Fish and Game

Kevin Hunting is currently the Deputy Director of Regional Operations for the Department of Fish and Game. In the recent past, Kevin served as the chief of the Habitat Conservation branch, Regional Manager of the South Coast Region, Staff Environmental Scientist focusing on watershed assessment issues, and as an Associate Biologist managing the Departments non-game bird program. Prior to Kevins 14 years with the Department, he was the Principal of an environmental consulting firm managing offices in Sacramento, Redding, and Bakersfield, California. He holds a bachelor of science degree in Wildlife Management from Humboldt State University.

April 16, 2008

Wednesday Morning Plenary Speaker

• Gary Langham, Ph.D.
• Director of Bird Conservation
• Audubon California

Wednesday Dinner Keynote Speaker

• John Muir Laws
• Author

Naturalist, educator and artist John (Jack) Muir Laws delights in exploring the natural world and sharing this love with others. He has worked as an environmental educator for over 25 years in California, Wyoming, and Alaska. He is trained as a wildlife biologist and is an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. His illustrations capture the feeling of the living plant or animal, while also including details critical for identification.

His most recent book, The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada, is an illustrated field guide to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals and is beautifully illustrated with 2,710 original watercolor paintings. This comprehensive and easy to use guide allows botanists to identify the insects that come to their flowers, birders to identify the trees in which the birds perch, or hikers to identify the stars overhead at night. Jack will present an illustrated lecture about the natural history of the Sierra Nevada, and the process of creating a field guide.

In the summer of 2004, Laws published Sierra Birds: a Hiker's Guide. He is also a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his "Naturalists Notebook" column. He is currently coordinating efforts to create a curriculum to tie the field guide to the State of California education standards and secure funding to donate sets of field guides to every elementary and high school in the Sierra Nevada and teaching field sketching and natural history classes throughout the state.