Online Presentation: Traditional Knowledge and Conservation of Reptiles with the Comcaac (Seri) | Gary Paul Nabhan | March 22nd, 2021 @ 7pm MST
~ Traditional Knowledge and Conservation of Reptiles with the Comcaac (Seri) ~
– Gary Paul Nabhan –
Kellogg Endowed Chair in Southwestern Borderlands Food and Water Security
Founder – Center for Regional Food Studies
University of Arizona
March 22nd, 2021 @ 7pm MST
[Link to online presentation will be posted here on the date of the presentation]
Gary’s talk will discuss the efforts to build capacity among the Seri Indians to manage their natural resources that began about two decades ago with Northern Arizona University facilitating the training of more than two dozen para-ecologists who now work as wildlife technicians, eco-tourist guides, sustainable harvesters of heritage foods, and habitat monitors. These efforts are documented in the film Seri Songs of Survival, produced by Laura Monti and Flagstaff film-maker Peter Blystone. The project’s results are also recorded in Nabhan’s book from the University of California Press Singing the Turtles to Sea. The Seri have also published research papers in the Southwestern Naturalist and the Marine Turtle Conservation Newsletter, on the project.
“The fate of the oceans affects us all so that it is not surprising that most lasting conservation solutions will have to be cross-cultural, building multi-ethnic constituencies,” noted Nabhan, CSE’s director, who helped initiate the effort in 1995. “Dr. Monti, Ms. Molina, Ms. Estrella, and Mr. Morales deserve credit in forging and fine-tuning a model for conservation collaborations across cultural and national boundaries, one that has applicability in other marine and coastal ecosystems as well.”
Gary Nabhan is an Agricultural Ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest. He is a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement. He has authored more than 30 books and received many awards including MacArthur Fellowship, John Burroughs Medal, and the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.
Gary co-founded Native Seeds/SEARCH while working at the University of Arizona. It is a non-profit conservation organization which works to preserve indigenous southwestern agricultural plants as well as knowledge of their uses (1982- 1993). He then served as director of science at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (1993-2000), before becoming founding director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ (2000-2008). In 2008 he moved back south to Tucson and joined the University of Arizona faculty as a research social scientist with the Southwest Center, where he now serves as the Kellogg Endowed Chair in Southwest- ern Borderlands Food and Water Security. He sits on several boards of conservation organizations.
