SMEA Associate Professor Sunny Jardine has been named President-elect of the North American Association of Fisheries Economists (NAAFE) for a four-year term. NAAFE is an association which influences the shape of fisheries management and policies in the US and elsewhere. The primary goal of the association is encouraging open communication among fisheries economists. You can learn more about NAAFE here. Please join us in congratulating Sunny! 

SMEA Professor of Practice Phil Levin has been appointed to the White House! The Biden-Harris administration has announced Phil’s appointment as director of the inaugural United States National Nature Assessment (NNA). The NNA uses an interdisciplinary lens to review the impact of nature on everyday human life. An assessment is tentatively scheduled for release in 2026. During this appointment, Phil will pause his teaching and advising responsibilities within SMEA. 

Please join us Tuesday, April 25th, 2023, from 12:00 to 1:30pm in the Burke Museum’s Cascade Room for Finding Common Ground: Digital Story Viewing. This is a collaborative event coproduced by University of Washington and Chief Leschi Schools students. 
The program will begin with a screening of the digital stories, followed by a discussion with the collaborators, and a chance to mingle over complimentary food from Off the Rez Cafe. 

Thank you for all who participated in this year’s #HuskyGivingDay. Your gift to the McKernan Fund helps SMEA continue training the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars. When the community giving platform closed  April 7th, SMEA had the highest donation amount in the College of the Environment and we tied for first place with the Atmospheric Sciences in terms of the number of gifts! 

Affiliate SMEA faculty member, Eric Laschever, in collaboration with Associate Professor Ryan Kelly, Michelle Hoge, and Kai Lee, recently published an article in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, which provides a legal analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) under existing U.S. federal statutes. The work was presented on April 4th at the New York Associated Journal Symposium. A copy of the journal article is available for review here. 

Why did you decide to pursue a Master of Marine Affairs?
I got my B.S. in environmental science so majority of my classes were natural sciences. After graduating from undergrad, I interned with a non-profit organization back home in Hawai’i called Mālama Maunalua. During this internship, I worked on a storm water management project and became interested in learning about how policies are placed to protect both marine ecosystems and human health. 

The School of Marine & Environmental Affairs will hold its next faculty meeting on Thursday, April 6, at 12:00pm. Please see below for location details;
Ocean  Building, Room 207 or via Zoom using the information below:
https://washington.zoom.us/j/93393936028?pwd=ZUxHS3liOGQ0ZTB6L0tyZDVPMEFYdz09
Meeting ID: 933 9393 6028
Passcode: 457426 US (Seattle)
A copy of the meeting agenda can be found here. Please contact Michaela Miller (mcski@uw.edu) with any questions or for more information. 

SMEA director Dr. Nives Dolšak and Dr. Eduardo Gallo Cajiao, a David H. Smith Postdoctoral Fellow at SMEA, along with a team of  scholars from Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the U.S., consider what the pending ‘Pandemic Treaty’ should incorporate  regarding the prevention of pandemics from the wildlife trade. Prevention of pandemics should focus on prevention at source, which means that zoonotic spillovers need to be avoided as globalization creates challenges for outbreak containment. 

SMEA David H. Smith Postdoctoral Fellow, Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao, has been nominated as a technical expert to the Intergovernmental Task Force to Address Illegal Hunting, Taking, and Trade of Migratory Birds in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway under the UN Convention on Migratory Species. This appointment is on the back of Eduardo’s contribution to the understanding of hunting of migratory shorebirds and international governance for conserving migratory shorebirds in the Asia-Pacific region. 

The University of Washington, along with the University of Alaska and Iowa State University, have received U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding for research relating to the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities. The grant, which SMEA Assistant Professor Cleo Wölfle Hazard Co-PIed, provides UW $1.2M for a project researching preservation along the Duwamish River. For more information, you can read the Fox13 article here.