Ecological Society of America

ESA’s policy activities aim to contribute ecological information to public policy through activities such as ESA letters, Capitol Hill briefings, congressional visits and participation in coalitions.

Recent Activities:

On May 15, 2012, the ESA participated in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s 18th Annual Exhibition and Reception entitled “STEM Research and Education: Underpinning American Innovation.”

ESA’s exhibit featured the research of ESA graduate student Sarah Roley of the University of Notre Dame. She spoke with numerous attendees, including federal agency and congressional staff, about her work on mitigating nutrient pollution in the agricultural Midwest. Roley also met with congressional staff from Indiana earlier that day to discuss her work and its relevance to the state. Read more here.

Communications activities at ESA encourage broad public understanding of ecology, primarily through press releases for the mass media and through the ESA blog, EcoTone

Recent news

02/07/2013 - Depression-era drainage ditches emerge as sleeping threat to Cape Cod salt marshes

Cape Cod, Massachusetts has a problem. The iconic salt marshes of the famous summer retreat are melting away at the edges, dying back from the most popular recreational areas. The erosion is a consequence of an unexpected synergy between recreational over-fishing and Great Depression-era ditches constructed by Works Progress Administration (WPA) in an effort to control mosquitoes. The cascade of ecological cause and effect is described by Tyler Coverdale and colleagues at Brown University in a paper published online this month in ESA's journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.