SWS 2008 Conference

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PLENARY SESSION
Organized by the Association of State Wetland Managers

Thursday Morning, 29 May
Lincoln Rooms 2, 3, and 4; Break in Exhibit Hall C

Wetlands Policy in a Changing Environment

Time	Speaker	Presentation Title
08:00–08:40	Virginia Burkett	Wetlands and Climate Change
08:40–09:20	Lynn Scarlett	Federal Lands/Water and Climate Change
09:20–10:00	Mike Houck	Wetlands in an Urban Environment
10:00–10:30	Morning Break
10:30–11:15	Rob Costanza	Valuing Wetlands: New Directions or Trends for Valuing Wetlands
11:15–12:00	Stephen Samuels	Clean Water Act Jurisdiction and the Courts

Virginia Burkett, U.S. Geological Survey
Virginia Burkett is the Chief Scientist for Global Change Research at the USGS. She was formerly Chief of the Forest Ecology Branch at the National Wetlands Research Center and Associate Regional Chief Biologist for the USGS Central Region. Dr. Burkett has served as Director of the Louisiana Coastal Zone Management Program, Director of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and Assistant Director of the Louisiana Geological Survey. She has published extensively on the topics of global change and low-lying coastal zones. She was a Lead Author on the United Nation's IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports (2001 and 2007) and an IPCC Technical Paper on Water (2007). She coordinated both the Coastal and Southeast synthesis chapters of the U.S. National Assessment of climate change and its impacts. During her career, Burkett has been appointed to over 40 Commissions, Committees, Science Panels and Boards.

Lynn Scarlett, U.S. Department of the Interior
Lynn Scarlett was confirmed as Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior in November 2005, a post she took on after 4 years as the Department's Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget. She served as Acting Secretary of the Department upon the resignation of former Secretary Gale Norton effective April 1, until the confirmation of Dirk Kempthorne on May 26, on 2006. She serves on the Executive Committee of the President's Management Council. Ms. Scarlett coordinates Interior's environmental policy initiatives to implement the President's executive order on cooperative conservation, serving on the White House Cooperative Conservation Task Force. From June 2003-2004, she chaired the Federal Wildland Fire Leadership Council, an interagency and intergovernmental forum for implementing the National Fire Plan and 10-Year Implementation Plan. She co-chairs the President and First Lady's Preserve America initiative on historic preservation and heritage tourism. She also co-chairs the Recreation Fee Leadership Council, a federal interagency group to coordinate recreation fee policy and practices on federal lands. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Udall Foundation as the Department of the Interior representative. Prior to joining the Bush Administration in July 2001, she was President of the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, a nonprofit current affairs research and communications organization. ms. Scarlett is author of numerous publications on incentive-based environmental policies. Ms. Scarlett received her B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also completed her Ph.D. coursework and exams in political science and political economy.

Mike Houck - Director, Urban Greenspaces
Mike Houck, Executive Director of the Urban Greenspaces Institute (www.urbangreenspaces.org), in Portland, Oregon, has been engaged the local, regional, national and international levels in urban planning, park and greenspace issues since 1980 when he founded the Urban Naturalist Program at the Audubon Society of Portland. He co-founded the Coalition For A Livable Future (www.clfuture.org) in 1994 to better integrate social and environmental issues. The Institute’s motto In Livable Cities is the Preservation of the Wild speaks to Houck’s philosophy that only by creating cities with a vibrant green infrastructure---including wetlands, streams, and forested habitats---easy access to nature, and a high quality of life, will rural landscapes be conserved and restored. Mike spent a year as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, focusing on urban planning and natural resource protection. He serves on Portland’s Park Board and Sustainable Development Commission. Mike also serves on the national steering committee of the Ecological Cities Project (www.ecologicalcities.org), the board of the National Association of Olmsted Parks, the board of directors of 1000 Friends of Oregon and the Coalition for a Livable Future. Mike co-edited Wild in the City, a Guide to Portland’s Natural Areas, and wrote Wild on the Willamette, Exploring the Lower Willamette River.

Robert Costanza, The Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont Prior to moving to Vermont in August 2002, Dr. Costanza was director of the University of Maryland Institute for Ecological Economics, and a professor in the Center for Environmental Science, at Solomons, and in the Biology Department at College Park. Dr. Costanza received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1979 in systems ecology, with a minor in economics. He also has a Masters degree in Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Florida. Dr. Costanza is co-founder and past-president of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) and was chief editor of the Society's journal, Ecological Economics, from its inception until 9/02. He is past president of the International Society for Ecosystem Health. In 1982 he was selected as a Kellogg National Fellow, in 1992 he was awarded the Society for Conservation Biology Distinguished Achievement Award, and in 1993 he was selected as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment. In 1998 he was awarded the Kenneth Boulding Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions in Ecological Economics. In 2000 he received an honorary doctorate in natural sciences from Stockholm University. He has served on the Scientific Steering Committee for the LOICZ and AIMES core project of the IGBP; the US EPA National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT); the National Research Council Board on Sustainable Development, Committee on Global Change Research; the National Research Council, Board on Global Change; the US National Committee for the Man and the Biosphere Program, and the National Marine Fisheries Service Committee on Ecosystem Principles.

Dr. Costanza's research has focused on the interface between ecological and economic systems, particularly at larger temporal and spatial scales. This includes landscape level spatial simulation modeling; analysis of energy and material flows through economic and ecological systems; valuation of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and natural capital; and analysis of dysfunctional incentive systems and ways to correct them. He is the author or co-author of over 300 scientific papers.

Stephen Samuels, U.S. Department of Justice
Stephen Samuels is Assistant Chief of the Environmental Defense Section of the Environment & Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, Mr. Samuels supervises a staff of attorneys handing federal district court litigation involving all the major environmental pollution statutes. Mr. Samuels has more than 22 years experience enforcing and defending the Section 404 regulatory program, having joined DOJ the same week that the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the protection of adjacent wetlands under the Clean Water Act in the Riverside Bayview Homes decision. He later helped lead the litigation response to the Supreme Court's decisions in SWANCC in 2001 and Rapanos in 2006, which narrowed the bases upon which jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act can be asserted. Mr. Samuels has been a frequent speaker about Clean Water Act jurisdiction, having made presentations at more than 50 conferences and workshops since SWANCC was decided. Prior to joining the Environmental Defense Section, Mr. Samuels was an attorney with the U.S. Department of Energy and with the law firm of Breed, Abbott & Morgan. Mr. Samuels earned his J.D. in 1977 from Stanford Law School and his B.A. in 1974 from Tulane University.