The southern sea otter is a keystone species in kelp forest communities, acting to increase the species diversity and providing ecosystem services. Despite federal protection since 1977, the southern sea otter population has struggled to recover and there are only an estimated 2,800 sea otters in California.
Listen to this conversation with Dr. James Estes, Emeritus Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. Estes is author of Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand Nature and appears in “The Serengeti Rules,” a 2019 film about “five unsung heroes of modern ecology,” of which he is one. Of course, Jim is best known for his research on California sea otters, once almost wiped out, then recovered and now again threatened by marine toxins, disease, orcas and agricultural chemical runoff.
More information is available on the Tinker & Estes Lab’s web page.
Rivers have long been the object of poems, songs, novels, studies, fishers, swimmers, sewage, engineers, farmers and salmon. In California, rivers and the water...
Sustainability Now! March 8, 2020, Auto-Free Living in Hayward? with Dr. Sherman Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Cal State East Bay, to...
Sustainability Now #23, July 12, 2020, with Len Beyea, addresses sustainable community planning in Santa Cruz and cities in general. Len is a semi-retired...
