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.
California is dry, dry, dry and that probably means we are in for a wild wildfire season. Since the beginning of January, there have...
Radio Show #37, January 24, 2021: Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with newly-elected California State Senator John Laird, to talk about energy,...
As the Earth gets warmer, the world’s glaciers get smaller. Land-based glaciers in the Earth’s polar regions hold enormous quantities of water and, as...
