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PLENARY SESSION

April 11th & 12th

A One Health Approach to Human Interactions with, and uses of, Wildlife

This Plenary Session will be broken up into 2 sessions – 2 speakers on Tuesday, April 11 and 1 speaker on Wednesday, April 12. This session features presentations and discussions from 3 experts in the One Health field.

Dr. Bob Gerlach, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation

“Alaska’s One Health Approach: Managing Domestic Animal, Wildlife, Environmental and Public Health”

Dr. Gerlach works for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation as the Alaska State Veterinarian. He is responsible for animal health regulations, animal disease surveillance and response, in addition manages the State’s Fish Monitoring Program and is the State’s Fish Advisory Program Coordinator. Dr Gerlach attended the Pennsylvania State University, received his Veterinary Degree (VMD) from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr Gerlach worked in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware as a livestock veterinarian specializing in dairy practice. From 1984 to 1987 he was attending veterinarian and post-doctoral fellow at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, NM with research focused on respiratory pathophysiology and toxicology. In 1987, he moved to Alaska and worked in private practice until being hired by the state in 2001 to manage the State’s Fish Monitoring Program and took on the position of State Veterinarian in 2003.

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Dr. Louisa Castrodale, Alaska State Section of Epidemiology

“Zoonotic Diseases and One Health”

Louisa Castrodale is a veterinary epidemiologist with the Alaska State Section of Epidemiology. She received a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Yale University, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, and a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. She practiced veterinary medicine in a small animal clinic outside of Baltimore before coming to Alaska in 1999 for a 2-year field epidemiology training program with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. She became a state employee in 2001 and has continued to work in the Section’s Infectious Disease Program. She has managed the Program since 2016.

Dr. Glenn Juday, University of Alaska Fairbanks

“Providing a healthy place for wildlife in a changing Alaska environment”

Glenn Patrick Juday is Professor Emeritus of Forest Ecology in the Institute of Agriculture Natural Resources and Extension and the Natural Resources and Environment Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). He joined the faculty in 1981 and received Emeritus status in 2015. He maintains research in climate change, monitoring of boreal tree growth and forest health, science advising activity, and an active speaking schedule.

He received his B.S. summa cum laude, in 1972 in Forest Management from Purdue University, and his Ph.D. in 1976, in Plant Ecology from Oregon State University. He completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Environmental Affairs, 1976-1977, and was on assignment as a Research Scientist in the USDA Forest Service at the Institute of Northern Forestry in Fairbanks from 1977-1981, working as Alaska Ecological Reserves Coordinator. Dr. Juday served as President of the Natural Areas Association from 1985 through 1988. and completed a sabbatical in the headquarters of The Nature Conservancy in Arlington Virginia in 1988. His professional work has taken him to 48 states and 15 nations outside the U.S.

Dr Juday taught graduate and undergraduate level university courses in natural resource decision making, forest management, conservation, wilderness management, climate change, and tree ring analysis over a 25-year period. His course in conservation biology was one of the earliest with that title in the U.S. Dr. Juday was a Senior Investigator in the NSF-supported Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research site in central Alaska until 2017. His research specialties include forest management, climate variability and change, forest development and tree regeneration following fire and forest harvest, tree-ring studies, and biodiversity and wilderness management. He was the Lead author of the chapter on Forests Land Management and Agriculture of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Dr. Juday has served as science advisor for several television programs on climate warming, including the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers, and magazine articles including National Geographic. He has briefed and led trips for several committees and member of Congress, including presidential candidates.

Dr. Juday was recognized for outstanding accomplishments as Chairman of Forest Ecology Working Group of the Society of American Foresters in 2000, and received the 2021 George Fell Award from the Natural Areas Association, the 2022 Lifetime Acheivement Award from the Purdue University Forestry and Natural Resources Department, and the Certificate of Distinction from the Purdue Ag Alumni Association. He is the author of 63 scientific peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters including Nature, Climatic Change, Global Change Biology, BioScience, Ecology Letters, Geophysical Research Letters, Forest Ecology and Management, Journal of Forestry, and Canadian Journal of Forest Research, and over 100 other scientific or professional publications. He has authored book chapters published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. His research is widely cited. He was one the early investigators on the subject of climate change and variability, which he began in 1980. Dr. Juday has also published on the geography and history of the Holy Land and the Parthenon. He has given over 360 presentations at scientific and professional meetings in the U.S. and internationally, many of them invited or sponsored. He has been a contributor to more than 100 media products – newspaper and blog articles, TV and radio segments and others. Dr. Juday serves on the University Advisory Board for the Center for Legislative Energy and Environmental Research, supporting the work of The Energy Council.

Dr. Juday and his wife Mary Beth have lived in Alaska for 42 years and have 4 children and 4 grandchildren. He was a parishoner at Sacred Heart Cathedral for most of his time in Alaska, teaching the adult religious education program for a number of years, and is currently a member of the Latin Mass community.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Dr. Jim Magdanz

“What can we learn from food security?”

In Alaska, where households harvest an estimated 45 million pounds of wild foods annually for their own and their families’ use, resource managers are responsible not only for maintaining natural and healthy resource populations, they also share in the responsibility for maintaining healthy communities. In 1978, a new section in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was charged by law with gathering information on all aspects of the role of subsistence hunting and fishing in Alaskans’ lives. Staff in the Division of Subsistence developed a comprehensive community survey program, collecting household-level data on resource harvests, incomes, demographics, and other variables. In 2010, staff introduced a modified food security protocol to the existing survey program, providing a new outcome variable well suited to the mixed economies of rural Alaska. This talk will discuss the contested nature of the term “food security,” the integration of food security into the Division of Subsistence’s comprehensive community research program, and the complexities of rural community food production and distribution systems in Alaska from a wildlife management perspective.

Jim Magdanz studies contemporary hunter-gatherer economies in rural Alaska through four theoretical frames: network analysis, food security, political ecology, and resilience. His work emphasizes quantitative approaches and focuses on the period beginning about 1980, when hunter-gatherer activities in Alaska were recognized in state and federal law as “subsistence” and when data collection efforts expanded exponentially. He has worked primarily with Iñuit communities in northwest Alaska. He contributed to more than 30 technical papers during a 31-year career with the Division of subsistence in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He has published in American Anthropologist, Ecology and Society, Nature Sustainability, PNAS, and PLoS ONE. He has a Bachelors in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a PhD in Natural Resources and Sustainability from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He also studied at the University Washington and the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School.