Dominick A. DellaSala

Dominick A. DellaSala

Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala is President and Chief Scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon and President of the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section. Dominick is an internationally renowned author of over 150 technical papers, including the award winning “Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World.” Dominick has given plenary and keynote talks ranging from academic conferences to the United Nations (Earth Summit II). He has appeared in National Geographic, Science Digest, Science, Time, Audubon, National Wildlife, High Country News, Terrain Magazine, NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, Jim Lehrer News Hour, CNN, MSNBC, “Living on Earth,” and several PBS wildlife documentaries.
He has testified in congressional hearings in defense of the Endangered Species Act, roadless area conservation, national monument designations, forest protections, and climate change among others. For his efforts to help foster national roadless area conservation and support designation of new national monuments, he received conservation leadership awards from the World Wildlife Fund in 2000 and 2004, the Wilburforce Foundation in 2006, and was twice nominated for conservation awards for his work as a whistleblower while on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service spotted owl recovery team. His rainforest book received an academic excellence award in 2012 from Choicemagazine, one of the nation's premier book review journals. Dominick co-founded the Geos Institute in July 2006. He is motivated by leaving a living planet for his daughter and all those to follow.

Guest Opinion: We need a moon-shot for the environment more than ever

This week, more than 193 nations will celebrate Earth Day. The annual event is a marker for the environmental movement begun on April 22, 1970, when Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson organized a peaceful teach-in. At the time, rivers were on fire, oil spills fouled Santa Barbara’s coastline, spaceships were headed to the moon, and the nation was at war.

Primary Forests Take Center Stage in Paris Climate Agreement

Following a fortnight of negotiations, an unprecedented agreement has been signed by all the world’s 196 nations which identifies forests and ecosystems as fundamental to the world’s climate change response. For the first time, the UN’s Paris Agreement has formally recognized in international law that conserving ecosystem-based carbon stocks including forests is central to achieving climate mitigation goals and that both biodiversity and human rights must be protected when taking climate action.

President Obama Should Include the Tongass In Alaska’s First Line of Global Warming Defense

I began my career as forest ecologist in the 1990s, cataloging the remarkable web-of-life in the old-growth rainforests of Prince of Wales Island. Since then, I have worked with rainforest ecologists around the world to document exceptional places like the Tongass and how they can contribute to a global climate change solution. Last April, hundreds of scientists, including myself, sent President Obama a letter asking him to include the Tongass as Alaska’s first line of climate defense.