- Author: UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management

Land use change in agricultural frontiers can have far-reaching social and environmental implications, such as habitat loss, water contamination, or worker demographic shifts — particularly when it involves the rapid expansion of a new industry such as cannabis production. A recent study published in Landscape and Urban Planning offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the drivers of cannabis production in rural areas, using interviews with farmers and spatial modeling to uncover key factors.
Led by researchers from UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) and the...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice

Several scientists affiliated with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources have received grants from the California Bureau of Cannabis Control. The BCC awarded on Nov. 13 a total of $29,950,494 in public university research grants across California for research projects related to the implementation and effect of Proposition 64.
Research proposals had to fall within one of the several specified categories, including public health, criminal justice and public safety, economics, environmental impacts and the cannabis...
- Author: Nate Seltenrich
- Editor: Julie Van Scoy

California land managers and wildlife experts are increasingly tasked with managing the return of long-suppressed predators to the landscape, including wolves, mountain lions, badgers, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, and bears. As a result, California is poised to see growing numbers of complex human-wildlife interactions, said Justin Brashares, UC Berkeley professor and UC ANR researcher.
State and federal policies once incentivized the removal of large carnivores, even offering bounty payments, Brashares said. The last California grizzly became a victim of such practices in 1922. The gray wolf was exterminated shortly thereafter, only to make...