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The symposium will celebrate the station’s legacy in ecological research and education, and explore challenges that face biodiversity conservation in Southern Appalachia and beyond, said Jim Costa, professor of biology at Western and the executive director at Highlands Biological Station. The symposium is free and open to the public.
Twelve featured speakers will be at the symposium, from organizations and institutions such as Conservation International, Duke University, University of North Carolina Botanical Garden, Oregon State University and the U.S. Geological Survey Invasive Species Program. The keynote address will be delivered by Phil DeVries, a tropical ecologist from the University of New Orleans who authored the two-volume “The Butterflies of Costa Rica.”
An inter-institutional center of the UNC system administered by WCU, Highlands Biological Station is a year-round biological field station located on a high plateau in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The station’s principal mission is to promote research and education in biodiversity studies, such as ecology, systematics, evolution and conservation, with special emphasis on the diverse flora and fauna of the region.
Founded in 1927 as a private research corporation, it joined the UNC system in 1976. At that time, the original research corporation reorganized into the Highlands Biological Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps support the mission of the station in education and research. The foundation provides support for scholarships and grants-in-aid for research, as well as maintenance and improvement of the station’s botanical garden.
“Students and researchers from around the nation and the world come annually to study or use the research facilities,” said Costa. “The station has a decades-long tradition of summer courses focusing on the unique organisms and ecology of the Southern Appalachians.”
In addition to facilities for research and teaching, the station has an extensive native-plant botanical garden, as well as a museum and nature center, all of which are open to the public.
For more information on the station or its anniversary symposium, go to www.wcu.edu/hbs or e-mail Jim Costa at costa@wcu.edu.
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Last modified: Monday, Oct. 1, 2007