GREENSBORO, NC
- Prominent biologists will speak about the
state of North Carolina’s flora and fauna
March 28 at UNCG. They will discuss why that
biodiversity is important and how it can be
preserved.
The UNCG Department of
Biology’s spring symposium, “The State of
Our State: Wild Things in North Carolina,”
will be held 1-5 p.m. in Jaylee Mead
Auditorium (Room 101) of the Science
Building. Richard B. Hamilton, Curtis
Smalling, John Alderman and Alan Weakley
will speak at the event, which is free and
open to the public.
Parking is available in
the McIver Street Parking Deck for $1 per
hour up to a maximum of $5 per day. A campus
map is available
online.
For more information about the event, call
(336) 334-5391.
Hamilton has recently
retired as executive director of the North
Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (WRC)
and is now working with the NC Wildlife
Federation. His 37 years with the WRC have
provided him with an exhaustive knowledge of
the state’s wildlife and wildlife policies.
Smalling is the
mountain region biologist for Audubon North
Carolina. He conducts extensive breeding
bird surveys in the mountains to identify
important birding areas. His work is used to
support public policy decisions. He has
written several books and articles and is
widely known and respected for his work. In
2005, Smalling and others investigated the
impacts of wind turbines on birds at Beech
Mountain.
Alderman is an endangered
species specialist and aquatic biologist who
monitors and helps to conserve freshwater
crayfish, mussels, snails and fish. During
the past quarter century, he has traveled
thousands of miles of creeks, rivers and
lakes, and has seen some of the most
beautiful land and waterscapes in North
Carolina as well as some of the most abused.
Weakley is the author of
“Flora of the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia,
and Surrounding Areas” and curator of the
University of North Carolina Herbarium,
which houses the largest collection of plant
specimens from the Southeastern United
States. For several decades, he has spent
his time documenting and helping to preserve
plant biodiversity in the Southeast.
