The public is invited to hear the history and latest discoveries in the Yellowstone Wolf Project, the controversial reintroduction plan that has reinvigorated the wolf population in Yellowstone National Park and surrounding regions.
Douglas Smith, a national park service wildlife biologist and director of the wolf project since its inception, will be giving the third of several presentations in the annual Discover Science Lecture Series. His Dec. 6 lecture, titled ‘The Wolves of Yellowstone: The First Fifteen Years,” begins at 7 p.m. in the Davidson Mathematics and Science Center.
Smith supervises the management and research of the Yellowstone wolf population. He has chronicled his work in Decade of the Wolf, which he co-authored with Gary Ferguson, and has published dozens of scientific and popular articles on wolves. The reintroduction project began in 1995 with the release of 14 Canadian wolves. The region now has a wolf population of more than 1,700. Smith discusses the Yellowstone Wolf Project in this YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZnayct6uZg.
He received his bachelor’s of science degree in wildlife biology from the University of Idaho in 1985, a master’s of science in biology from Michigan Technological University in 1988 and his doctorate from the University of Nevada, Reno in the program of ecology, evolution and conservation biology.
The College of Science’s annual Discover Science Lecture Series has brought some of the world’s leading scientists to the Reno-Sparks community to share their knowledge. Among the guests have been anthropologist Anna Roosevelt, physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Nobel Laureate and physicist Eric Cornell, chemist and green energy expert Harry Gray and Jeff Lieberman, musician, artist, researcher and host of “Time Warp” on the Discovery Channel.
This year, the Discover Science Lecture Series has featured Bill Nye the Science Guy and Robert Trivers, and will feature Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics from City College of New York City, on Feb. 7.
Lectures are scheduled to be held at 7 p.m. in the Redfield Auditorium, Davidson Mathematics and Science Center at the University of Nevada, Reno. Admission is free. Parking is reserved for the event on the upper level of the Brian J. Whalen Parking Complex. For more information, call 775-784-4591 or visit the College of Science webpages at www.unr/edu/cos.
