School of Natural Resources and Environment

Environmental Policy & Planning News & Highlights

Reception for the Envoys Fellows!

SNRE Envoys is a cross-disciplinary group of Masters Students working to promote and strengthen diversity within the student population of the school. Our group is focused on improving our recruiting strategy for under-represented groups in the school. This can include everything from ethnic to geographic to socio-economic to ideological diversity and much more. We are also looking to strengthen SNRE by having events that celebrate diversity and involve the whole SNREd community in the ongoing discussion about this important topic.

StudGov Ticker: Meeting Notes from 09/25/2012

Editor's Note: The StudGov ticker is a short summary of the weekly StudGov meeting (7 pm Tuesday, 1028 Dana).  The meeting is open to the SNRE community, but for those who are unable to attend, these notes provide a brief synopsis of the meeting.  Posts will be weekly.

Careers Team: Career Week is well underway and funding is nearly secured. 

 Still Needed:

SNREd’ing Out in Our Nation’s Capital -- SNRE M.S. Student Emily Taylor

As a summer intern at the World Resources Institute (WRI) in the Markets and Enterprise Program, SNRE M.S. student Emily Taylor had the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of financing climate change mitigation.  Emily received funding for her internship through the Edna Bailey Sussman Fund Environmental Internship Program.  This generous funding enables SNRE students to accept non-paying internship positions in environmental fields. 

Bill McKibben spoke to SNRE and PitE students Sept. 14 in the Dana Building.

Author and activist McKibben warns that time for climate action is short

Author, environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben urged U-M students for their support Friday in a campaign to help prevent catastrophic climate change due largely to the burning of fossil fuels.

"We really are up against it. The swift deterioration of the physical conditions around the planet in the last couple of years has been staggering," said McKibben, author of the 1989 book “The End of Nature” and co-founder and chairman of 350.org, which describes itself as a global grassroots campaign to solve the climate crisis.

First SNRE Town Hall Meeting -- Sept.19th at 4:30!

Calling all students to the first SNRE town hall of the year!  We want your feedback! 

Please join us to share your views on the first weeks of the fall semester and to discuss paths forward for our fair institution. StudGov representatives will be in Dana 1040 at 4:30pm on Sept. 19 to facilitate a discussion on any and all matters regarding the SNRE student experience.

Students are strongly encourage to attend.  Weather and can-do spirits permitting, we'll likely head to Dominick's following the meeting (~6pm) to kick back and continue the conversation.

Construction of new rock spawning reefs will help Great Lakes native fish

The first of nine rock reefs is under construction in the St. Clair River delta northeast of Detroit. The goal of the project, which is led by Michigan Sea Grant, is to boost populations of lake sturgeon and other rare native fish by providing river-bottom rock structures where they can spawn. The rock reefs are designed to assist several native species that are considered threatened or endangered in Michigan, including lake sturgeon, mooneye, the northern madtom catfish and the river redhorse sucker. Walleye, a popular sport fish, and commercially important lake whitefish should also benefit. The new reefs will be constructed in the Middle Channel of the St. Clair River delta, near an existing lake sturgeon spawning site.

SNRE student projects among those funded by Planet Blue Student Innovation Fund

Four substantial, student-led sustainability projects are gaining momentum on campus, thanks to financial support from the new Planet Blue Student Innovation Fund. Three of the four, focused on reusable takeout food containers, a sustainable food kiosk and a U-M campus farm, were developed by students at SNRE. Announced by President Mary Sue Coleman last fall as part of her larger campus sustainability address, the Planet Blue Student Innovation Fund offers grants of up to $50,000 annually for projects that reduce the university's environmental footprint and/or promote a culture of sustainability on campus.

Leadership symposium offers strategies for conservation groups

Strategies to meet the leadership and management challenges facing environmental groups is the focus of a special symposium Friday, March 16, at the University of Michigan. The "Conservation Forward: Environmental Leadership in Action" symposium concludes with a keynote address by John Ehrmann (M.S. '81, Ph.D. '7), who has pioneered the use of collaborative decision-making processes for more than two decades at the local, national and international levels. The symposium also features expert-led panel discussions on topics such as urban sustainability, energy, state and federal policy, ecosystem services and landscape-scale conservation. The discussions will give managers and leaders at southeast Michigan conservation groups the chance to learn new techniques and strategies to help their organizations.

Bierbaum addresses U.N. investor summit on climate change

SNRE Professor Rosina M. Bierbaum was a featured speaker at the 2012 Investor Summit on Climate Risk and Energy Solutions, held last week at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Bierbaum's speech, "An Urgent Challenge: Economic Impacts of Climate Change and Resource Scarcity," linked the issues of climate change, development and economic prosperity. "Climate change has severe economic ramifications, affecting the availability and sustainability of financial capital and natural resource capital," she said. "It could easily exacerbate inequality in the world, as the poorest countries will experience the greatest impacts, yet have the least financial , technical and scientific resources to cope."

SNRE Duke, Wyss students attend leadership retreat

Eight SNRE students who are either Duke Conservation Fellows or Wyss Conservation Scholars returned this week from an annual retreat held each year for members of the programs. The retreat, held at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W.V., was again facilitated by SNRE Professor Steven Yaffee, who also serves as the school's director of the Duke and Wyss scholars program.

U-M launches collaboration to help Great Lakes cities adapt to a changing climate

Faced with increasing risks of intense storms, heat stress, clean water availability and economic hardship, municipal leaders are seeking high-quality, location-specific analyses to help plan for climate change impacts. That is the focus of a new $1.2 million University of Michigan research project called the Great Lakes Adaptation Assessment for Cities.

Dean Bierbaum helps release White House report on ecosystems, environmental capital

The federal government should launch a series of efforts to assess thoroughly the condition of U.S. ecosystems and the social and economic value of the services those ecosystems provide, according to a new report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an independent council of the Nation's leading scientists and engineers. The report also recommends that the Nation apply modern informatics technologies to the vast stores of biodiversity data already collected by various Federal agencies in order to increase the usefulness of those data for decision- and policy-making.

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