Biodiversity Conservation

The practical application of policies and techniques to preserve and enhance biodiversity in the face of resource development and global environmental change. The course will cover the role of biodiversity in global systems, processes, threats to biodiversity, the history of biodiversity conservation, and major national and internal level insitutions and policies tasked with preserving biodiversity for its environmental, cultural, and intrinsic values. As humans enter a period of mass extinction and biodiversity loss, biodiversity conservation has emerged as a central challenge of the coming century. Students successfully completing this course will be well prepared to play an active role in one of the defining issues of our time.