Join us for the first COSF Speaker Series event of 2021 – the Wildlife Crossing at Liberty Canyon by Beth Pratt
On Thursday March 11th at 6:30 pm, Beth Pratt, the National Wildlife Federation’s California regional executive director and lifelong wildlife advocate, will kick off the 2021 Conejo Open Space Foundation’s free virtual Speaker Series. She has spearheaded the efforts to raise funds and public support for a wildlife crossing over the 101 freeway at Liberty Canyon in Agoura Hills. The crossing, which COSF has pledged $10,000 toward, will ensure the safety and genetic diversity of the area’s mountain lions and other wild animals. With Caltrans finalizing design and engineering plans in July, construction should begin in late 2021.
Beth will discuss the importance of connectivity and wildlife crossings, and give an update on the #SaveLACougars campaign. With the 101, 405, and other major roadways essentially trapping them in an island environment, what are the future prospects for our native pumas? “As someone who spent most of my career working in remote wilderness areas, my main priority is now urban wildlife conservation and creating co-existence strategies in our human spaces,” she says. Beth sports a tattoo of the famous Griffith Park mountain lion P-22.
Author of “When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors: People and Wildlife Working It Out in California” (2016), and “I Heart Wildlife: A Guided Activity Journal for Connecting with the Wild World” (2020), Beth has served as NWF regional executive director since 2011. Prior to that, she was the director of environmental affairs for Xanterra Parks & Resorts in Yellowstone National Park, which she came to from the nonprofit Yosemite Association (now Yosemite Conservancy), where she was vice president/CFO. Beth graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston with bachelor’s degrees in management and biological anthropology. She also holds an MBA from Regis University in Denver.
This will be another Zoom webinar presentation. To sign up for this event, go to http://cosf.org/events/register/ and fill in the form. We will send instructions on how to join the webinar presentation to those who sign up on the day before the event.
When you sign up for this event, you will receive a confirmation email from us within a minute or two. If you don’t receive this email, and/or our email note on how to join the presentation, check your spam folder for these messages. To be safe, you should add all email from cosf.org to your email program’s “white list.”
This is a free event. We suggest a donation of $10 to support future Speaker Series presentations in 2021 and our other activities that help sustain the open space for us all to enjoy.
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