2023 Schedule – Pacific Time

Mediterranean ecosystems are found in only five places on earth: California, Mediterranean Europe (of course!), Chile, Australia and South Africa. These habitats also have a bit of everything —fertile soils that make them agricultural breadbaskets, temperate climates and beautiful landscapes where many people want to live and work, and biological diversity, with an unusual number of endemic plants. This makes them both global biodiversity hotspots and both rare and gravely threatened by unsustainable agriculture, forestry and commercial and residential real estate. In this panel, we'll hear from four experts who are at the forefront of efforts to protect Mediterranean habitats in California, Chile, Europe and Australia. We'll learn about the challenges they face, especially from the growing climate-change-driven impacts of wildfires and drought. Their approaches include innovative, resilience-based landscape and watershed management and land use planning, working landscape conservation easements, new private land protection agreements created outside the United States and more. The session will be of interest to Rally attendees who work in or want to learn more about Mediterranean habitats, and to practitioners conserving challenging, populated and ecologically significant landscapes.