Increasing the Diversity of U.S. Conservation Science Professionals via the Society for Conservation Biology

Leveraging natural capital to solve the shared education and conservation crisis

“…These populations are also underrepresented in conservation professions; thus, conservation decisions often reflect the views of elites (Foster et al. ). Conservation and education have shared problems, and we argue they have shared solutions.…”

Racial and ethnic differences in the students’ readiness, identity, perceptions of institutional diversity, and desire to join the environmental workforce

“…Environmental leaders also identify challenges with recruitment as a major barrier (Taylor 2014a;Foster et al 2013). Most of the students in this study think the extent to which they are recruited will influence their decision to work in the environmental field.…”

“…The traditional views of minorities often portray them as being stymied and overwhelmed by historical discrimination and marginalization (Foster et al 2011(Foster et al , 2013Haynes et al 2015), spending limited time outdoors, disinterested in the environment, being overly concerned with high wages, lacking knowledge of the environment, and not having the appropriate academic backgrounds to work in environmental organizations (Taylor 2007(Taylor , 2014aEnvironmental Careers Organization 1992;Foster et al 2011Foster et al , 2013.…”

“…This question was posed to faculty at minorityserving institutions and they also identified lack of leadership opportunities as a critical barrier (Foster et al 2011(Foster et al , 2013. This is worth paying attention to as it might be a signal of the new ways in which minorities are looking at jobs in the environmental field.…”

Private land manager capacity to conserve threatened communities under climate change

“…While a recent special section of Conservation Biology sheds light on theories, methods and processes for integrating spatially referenced biological and social data to inform community engagement programs (see Raymond, 2014 for an overview), we are not aware of any works which have systematically integrated measures of the distribution of threatened communities (an indicator of conservation priority) with aspects of management feasibility to inform the selection and design of community engagement programs. Such a line of questioning should help tailor engagement approaches to increase the range of land managers and conservation science organisations involved in conservation planning in the 21st century (Foster et al, 2014).…”