Scripps Marine Ecologist Named 2005 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow

Scripps Institution of Oceanography / University of California, San Diego

Enric Sala, an associate professor of marine ecology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has been selected as a 2005 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow.

Sala also is a founding member and deputy director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (CMBC) at Scripps, a research center dedicated to the understanding, conservation and management of global marine biodiversity. He has been associated with Scripps since 1997.

Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowships provide academic environmental scientists with intensive communications and leadership training to help them communicate scientific information effectively to non-scientific audiences, especially policy makers, the media, business leaders and the public. Selected through a competitive application process, fellows have outstanding scientific qualifications, demonstrated leadership ability and a strong interest in communicating science beyond traditional academic audiences. There have been 80 fellows selected since the program was established in 1998; this year's group adds 20 more.

"Enric Sala is an ideal candidate for the Aldo Leopold program, bringing superb science to the solution of some of the ocean's most pressing problems," said Nancy Knowlton, director of CMBC and a 1999 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. "His work spans the globe, with major projects in the Mediterranean, the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the Gulf of California and soon at Palmyra Atoll. His practical accomplishments include designing marine protected areas for the Gulf of California and providing the scientific basis for persuading the Belizean government to protect grouper spawning sites. As deputy director of Scripps's Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation and co-principal investigator for an IGERT [National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program] grant, he is actively involved in training young scientists so that they can bridge the natural and social sciences to provide strategies for halting and reversing the decline in ocean health."

"The 2005 cohort of Leopold Leadership Fellows comprises a truly outstanding group of scientists working to address today's most important environmental challenges," said Jane Lubchenco, Distinguished Professor of Zoology at Oregon State University, who founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and co-chairs the steering committee. "The training sessions will help them become more effective in their work individually, and the range and depth of their collective knowledge will make the Leopold Leadership Network even stronger."

Sala, a marine ecologist and conservation biologist, researches the impacts of human activities on coastal environments, the ecology of coastal fishes and interactions between species. He has conducted extensive field research in sites such as the Gulf of California, the Mediterranean Sea and Belize. He is a member of the Marine Advisory Committee of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. In 2000 he was appointed a research fellow of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program is based at Stanford University's Stanford Institute for the Environment. It is named for renowned environmental scientist and writer Aldo Leopold.