Speakers: Elizabeth Pansing and Wes Swaffar, American Forests
Title: Research and Restoration: American Forests’ role in recovering whitebark pine
Date & Time: Tuesday, May 21st, 2024

Abstract:
American Forests is working across whitebark pine’s range to support the suite of activities necessary for its conservation and restoration. Whether it be addressing research needs to improve management activities and protocols, bolstering seed collection, supporting key infrastructure, or supporting planting, monitoring, and other restoration activities, American Forests is working with a variety of partners to provide critical support as needed. In this talk, we will cover the various forms of support that American Forests is providing to partner organizations to ramp up the conservation and restoration of whitebark pine as well as summarize ongoing research and planning initiatives in place that can guide science-backed restoration and improve success over the long-term.

Bio:
Elizabeth Pansing develops and implements research initiatives to improve restoration and climate-smart forestry initiatives, provides insight into adaptive forest management strategies, and evaluates forest ecosystem response to climate change and other disturbance agents including wildfire. Pansing also ensures that forest management objectives and initiatives reflect the current state of the science, translating recent findings into actionable insights. Pansing is a quantitative ecologist with a background in forestry and alpine plant community ecology and has studied Rocky Mountain ecosystems for over a decade, focusing on conifer regeneration, post-fire community recovery and demographic modeling. She obtained her doctorate and master’s from the University of Colorado Denver.

Wes Swaffar develops strategy and direction to implement American Forests’ landscape restoration initiatives in the Northern Rockies. Prior to this role, Swaffar worked for American Forests to help establish the 1t.org US Chapter, the first regional chapter of a global initiative to conserve, restore and grow 1 trillion trees. Prior to joining American Forests, Swaffar developed and directed a reforestation campaign for the National Forest Foundation, facilitating the restoration of thousands of acres. Swaffar holds a master’s degree in environmental science and policy from Northern Arizona University and a bachelor’s in resource conservation from the University of Montana.