Conserving wetlands and endangered wood stork habitat in the Western Everglades is the topic of Stetson University College of Law’s next Edward and Bonnie Foreman Biodiversity Lecture on Oct. 30. The lecture by Jan Goldman-Carter, National Wildlife Federation wetlands and water resources counsel, is scheduled for 12 p.m. in the Great Hall on Stetson’s Gulfport campus at 1401 61st St. S.

The lecture is co-sponsored by Stetson’s Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy and is free and open to the public.

The Everglades support Florida’s environmental health by filtering and removing pollutants from the water, sustaining fish, shellfish and wildlife, and providing a buffer to flooding. For more than 100 years, the Everglades have been altered through draining, diverting and damming the waters, threatening the wetlands system and native plants and wildlife. In the past 40 years, Florida’s wood stork population of nesting birds has declined from thousands to hundreds, endangering the survival of the species.

Stetson’s Edward and Bonnie Foreman Biodiversity Lecture Series brings leading experts to campus to speak on a range of environmental topics directly impacting the state, from protecting Florida’s fragile coastal environment and endangered orchids to advocating for the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

Professor Royal Gardner, the director of the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy at Stetson, won the National Wetlands Award for Education and Outreach in 2006 and is the past chair of the U.S. National Ramsar Committee, promoting the conservation and sustainable use of domestic and international wetlands.

Visit law.stetson.edu to learn more about the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy at Stetson.