The George Wright Society champions stewardship of parks, protected & conserved areas, cultural sites, and other kinds of place-based conservation by connecting people, places, knowledge, and ideas. By uniting people from many different backgrounds around a common passion for protecting Earth’s natural and cultural heritage, we create the collaboration needed to meet today’s greatest conservation challenges.
INNOVATING ACROSS BOUNDARIES FOR
Parks • Cultural Sites
Protected / Conserved Areas
Free webinar October 18:
Conserving Crop Wild Relatives in Biosphere Regions
Call for Contributions:
Forthcoming PSF issue spotlighting LGBTQIA+ issues & achievements
What sets us apart: Interdisciplinary conservation thinking
GWS’s unique role is to foster interdisciplinary place-based conservation. Specialist organizations and subject-matter professional societies create essential knowledge. GWS operates one level up from that endeavor: we provide opportunities for specialists to go beyond their usual mental boundaries and see how what they know connects with, and complements, what other specialists know. GWS nurtures the kind of context-aware thinking needed to tackle complex conservation problems.
What we create: Innovation
Innovation only comes from open minds. Open minds thrive in a collegial atmosphere that encourages people to think outside their silo, beyond their usual point of view. GWS is the only conservation organization that exists specifically to bring people together from a wide range of points of view in settings designed to allow open-mindedness to flourish. By doing this, GWS creates space for multidimensional learning and collaboration that leads to innovative conservation action.
How we work: Convening
The learning spaces we create are both physical and virtual. We convene opportunities for people to come together in person: face-to-face events that expand communication networks, support mentoring, and build the capacity of park and protected area stewards, cultural and natural resource managers, scientists and other scholars, and teachers and students. We also help create these goods by nurturing a virtual global community of stewardship through publications and online interactions.
Today’s top story • 3 October 2022
Endangered fish population in Death Valley NP up sharply, to highest level in 19 years
One of the most endangered fish species on the planet, one that calls a tiny water-filled cave home, has undergone a population boom. National Park Service biologists recently surveyed the Devils Hole pupfish colony at Death Valley National Park, and counted 263 individuals, the greatest number recorded in 19 years.
This count came on the heels of a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Mexico that caused 4-foot waves in Devils Hole on September 19. Pupfish are counted using both scuba and surface visual counters. Sloshing waves removed algae, invertebrates, and other organic matter from a shallow shelf that pupfish use to forage and spawn. This made it easier for biologists to see and count pupfish from the surface. Scientists using scuba also counted pupfish at greater depths.
INSPIRED BY GEORGE MELÉNDEZ WRIGHT
George Meléndez Wright was born in San Francisco, California, and in 1933 became the first chief of the wildlife division of the U.S. National Park Service. Under his vision and leadership, each park started to survey and evaluate the status of wildlife and to identify urgent problems. As one of the first and only Latino staff for the Park Service, he was a true pioneer in celebrating diversity and working together across disciplines for parks, wildlife & wild places.
The George Wright Society was founded in 1980 in his honor, to continue the legacy of forward thinking and applied solutions in an ever-changing environment.
Learn how the story of George Meléndez Wright is inspiring young people in the book Bravo! Poems About Amazing Hispanics
