(Source: University of California – Santa Barbara) In developed countries, there appears to be a steep decline for the support of natural history, the study of the fundamental nature of organisms and how and where they live and interact with their environment. Yet natural history provides essential knowledge for fields as varied as human health, food security, conservation, land management and recreation. Stephanie Hampton, former deputy director of UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), was one of 17 authors convened by Joshua J. Tewksbury of the University of Washington (UW) and the international office of the World Wide Fund for Nature to…
