Date/Time
Thursday
8 Oct 2015
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Special Event

Dr. Philip Garone
Associate Professor of History, Graduate Program Director; California State University, Stanislaus

California’s Great Central Valley once contained approximately four million acres of permanent and seasonal wetlands, which supported enormous numbers of waterfowl and other waterbirds. After statehood in 1850, Californians began to drain or “reclaim” these wetlands throughout the entire valley, primarily for conversion of the land to agriculture. During the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, we have been protecting and restoring—rather than destroying—valley wetlands. This presentation will focus on both the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley, telling the quite different stories of the history of wetlands in each place, and exploring the intersections of science and society that underlie changing attitudes toward wetlands and the wildlife they support.