Jan. 23, 2007 -- Renowned conservationist Robert L. Pressey will give a public talk on Tuesday, Jan. 30 at the University of Virginia. Pressey's lecture, "Science and Politics in Conservation Planning," is sponsored by the Department of Environmental Sciences and will be in Clark Hall, Room 108 at 4 p.m.

Pressey is widely known as a pioneer of systematic environmental planning, a subfield of conservation biology that focuses on the development of comprehensive and structured strategies for environmental conservation. He created an influential framework for protected-area prioritization and design that has been implemented in many parts of the world, including: Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Guyana, Namibia, South Africa and the United States. The C-Plan software he invented is used by major non-governmental organizations and governments alike. This software not only recognizes the importance of people as part of the natural landscape, but invites every stakeholder to participate in the process of balancing resource use and protection. His current research program is expansive-both in scientific and geographic scope-and continues to push the boundaries of conservation science.
 
Pressey is the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Visiting Professor at U.Va.'s School of Architecture this spring. As a faculty member in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, he taught a January Term class on the principles and practice of systematic conservation planning. During the semester he will work with Timothy Beatley, Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, and landscape architecture faculty member Miranda Maupin to organize a global conference which aims to bring together a group of the world's leading conservation planners for productive discussions with each other and with students and faculty.
 
Pressey is a professor at the Ecology Centre at the University of Queensland in Australia. He has received numerous awards including the 2004 New South Wales Premier's Public Sector Award - Environment, the 2002 Royal Botanic Gardens Eureka Prize for Biodiversity Research that revolutionized the identification of priority areas for nature conservation, and the 2001 Edward T. LaRoe III Award from the Society for Conservation Biology for outstanding contributions to the conservation of biological resources. He serves on the editorial boards of Biological Conservation and Conservation Biology and has written more than 70 peer-reviewed journal papers.

For more information about the talk contact Stephen Macko at (434) 924-6849 or sam8f@virginia.edu.