Fellows mentioned in this story: Jack Kittinger

From Arizona State University News:

Every April, Earth Month prompts a familiar ritual; pledges, posts and recycling drives. But at Arizona State University, Earth Month 2026 looked different. It looked like a conversation about careers, urgency and what it actually takes to build a life in conservation.

In celebration of Earth Week, the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures hosted its first Conservation Forward panel, gathering students, faculty and practitioners for a candid discussion about the future of the field. The event's central question cut straight to what students in the room were already asking themselves: How do you turn passion into practice?

The answer, it turns out, is both more complicated and more attainable than it might seem.

The School of Conservation Futures, the newest addition to the Rob Walton College of Global Futures and the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, emerged as a direct response to support the field of conservation. The conservation sector is under pressure, facing the “twin crises" of biodiversity loss and climate change — with a workforce in transition and an urgent need for practitioners who can operate across disciplines, borders and knowledge systems.

"We face the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. Those two crises are highly interrelated, and they are accelerating. And we are not meeting that acceleration with a commensurate effort level," said Jack Kittinger, director of the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures. "That's what we aim to do here at the school, is to tool up, skill up and build the workforce of the future to meet that challenge head on."

Continue reading at asu.edu.