Adina Merenlender

Adina Merenlender (born October 1, 1963) is a Professor of Cooperative Extension in Conservation Science at University of California, Berkeley in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Department, and is an internationally recognized conservation biologist known for land-use planning, watershed science, landscape connectivity, and naturalist and stewardship training.

Early life and education

Merenlender was born in Seattle, Washington and raised in West Los Angeles, California.

Merenlender graduated from UC California San Diego in 1985 with a BA in Biology, where she also received her MS from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 1986. She was a visiting graduate student at Princeton University from 1987 to 1993, and she graduated from the University of Rochester in 1993 with a PhD in Biology.

Career

After earning her PhD in Biology, Merenlender did her post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University from 1993 to 1995, researching riparian plant and aquatic insect communities on Great Basin working lands under different livestock grazing regimes. She started her career at UC Berkeley as assistant cooperative extension specialist and adjunct professor in 1995, at which time she moved to Mendocino County to conduct research at the UC Hopland Research and Extension Center, a 5,000-acre field station.

Upon arriving in California's wine country, Merenlender conducted some of the first research in Vinecology, the integration of ecological and viticultural practice to produce solutions for wine production and nature conservation. Merenlender continues to advance conservation. Her work across California's North Coast vineyard landscape also includes watershed studies, revealing ways to avoid summer water withdrawals from streams to irrigate wine grapes, which is a necessary step to recovering California's salmon runs.

Merenlender led the earliest inquiries into the realized conservation benefits, or lack thereof, from conservation easements which spurred a large and still-growing body of scholarship on the topic. She also provided some of the first evidence for the impacts of quiet recreation on meso-carnivores and sparked continued field research into recreation management to minimize these impacts.

Merenlender started the California Naturalist Program and served as its founding director, which to date has graduated over 4,000 certified California Naturalists. Building on the success of this program, Merenlender helped start the first public education and service program on climate stewardship, including writing Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California with Brendan Buhler. The two programs provide collective impact on ecological health through community and citizen science.

In 2004, Merenlender was a visiting scholar at the University of Queensland Department of Zoology in Brisbane, Australia. She was also a visiting scholar at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City in 2008, and with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative through the University of Cambridge Zoology Department in 2019.

As president, Merenlender worked with the Governing Board and staff to reorganize the Society of Conservation Biology as a global network to preserve biodiversity.

Awards and honors

• President, Society for Conservation Biology, 2019-2021
• California Academy of Sciences Fellow, 2018
• Distinguished service award for outstanding extension work at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR), 2016
• Program of the Year, California Naturalist Program, by Alliance for Natural Resource Outreach and Service Programs, 2015
• Handling Editor, journal, Conservation Biology
• Section Editor, journal, PlosOne

Published works

Merenlender has published over 100 scientific research articles on the relationships between land use and biodiversity, and co-authored a book on wildlife corridor planning, Corridor Ecology: The science and practice of linking landscapes for biodiversity conservation, with the first edition published in 2006 and the second in 2019. She also co-authored The California Naturalist Handbook, and Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California.

• Elsen, Paul R.; Monahan, William B.; Dougherty, Eric R.; Merenlender, Adina M. (June 2020). "Keeping pace with climate change in global terrestrial protected areas". Science Advances. 6 (25): eaay0814. Bibcode:2020SciA....6..814E. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aay0814. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 7299617. PMID 32596440.
• Krogman, William (2020). "Corridor Ecology: Linking Landscapes for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation (second edition). Jodi A. Hilty, Annika T. H. Keeley, William Z. Lidicker Jr., and Adina M. Merenlender. 2019. Island Press, Washington, D.C., USA. 350 pp. $40.00 paperback". The Journal of Wildlife Management. 84 (4): 829. doi:10.1002/jwmg.21836. ISBN 9781610919517. S2CID 213775788.
• Kremen, C.; Merenlender, A. M. (2018-10-18). "Landscapes that work for biodiversity and people". Science. 362 (6412): eaau6020. doi:10.1126/science.aau6020. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 30337381. S2CID 53012788.
• Kitzes, Justin; Merenlender, Adina (March 2013). "Extinction risk and tradeoffs in reserve site selection for species of different body sizes: Reserve design by species body size". Conservation Letters. 6 (5): 341–349. doi:10.1111/conl.12015.
• Reed, Sarah E.; Merenlender, Adina M. (2008-06-28). "Quiet, Nonconsumptive Recreation Reduces Protected Area Effectiveness". Conservation Letters. 1 (3): 146–154. Bibcode:2008ConL....1..146R. doi:10.1111/j.1755-263x.2008.00019.x. ISSN 1755-263X. S2CID 13424093.
• Kondolf, G. M.; Anderson, S.; Lave, R.; Pagano, L.; Merenlender, A.; Bernhardt, E. S. (September 2007). "Two Decades of River Restoration in California: What Can We Learn?". Restoration Ecology. 15 (3): 516–523. Bibcode:2007ResEc..15..516K. doi:10.1111/j.1526-100x.2007.00247.x. ISSN 1061-2971. S2CID 56074863.
• Newburn, David A.; Berck, Peter; Merenlender, Adina M. (February 2006). "Habitat and Open Space at Risk of Land-Use Conversion: Targeting Strategies for Land Conservation". American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 88 (1): 28–42. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8276.2006.00837.x. ISSN 0002-9092. S2CID 154549055.
• Merenlender, A. M.; Huntsinger, L.; Guthey, G.; Fairfax, S. K. (February 2004). "Land Trusts and Conservation Easements: Who Is Conserving What for Whom?". Conservation Biology. 18 (1): 65–76. Bibcode:2004ConBi..18...65M. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2004.00401.x. ISSN 0888-8892. S2CID 35032260.