NightSchool: City Nature

Learn how humans and nature converge in the Bay Area, with a look at several case studies in how humans have impacted life in San Francisco and beyond—and what’s next.

• Academy scientists and collaborators are working to bring back a Bay Area butterfly driven to extinction in the 1930s—the Xerces blue. The Academy’s Chris Grinter (Entomology Collections Manager), Dr. Durrell Kapan (Senior Research Fellow), and Dr. Athena Lam (Director of the Center of Comparative Genomics) talk about their roles in this project and the butterfly’s historic role in San Francisco’s sand dunes.

• Life of all sizes finds a way in big cities. Dr. Christopher Schell, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley, talks about coyotes in the face of human-driven environmental impacts across San Francisco and the Bay Area and how structural inequalities can shape both cities themselves and all life within them.

• As a natural island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, Yerba Buena teems with life. Academy Curator of Botany Dr. Sarah Jacobs and Community Science Co-Director Alison Young highlight the unique human-driven ecology of the island, including stunning aquatic life, native plants not documented anywhere else, and even the occasional message in a bottle, and share about what’s being done to protect the island’s nature moving forward.

NightSchool is in session on the first & third Thursdays of every month.

All NightSchool virtual programming is intended for audiences 21+.

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PAST VIRTUAL NIGHTLIFE EVENTS

Missed the party? Just want to relive the magic? Watch the recorded livestreams on YouTube!