School Notes: School of the Environment
March/April 2019

One alum succeeds another as New York state parks commissioner

Erik Kulleseid ’85, ’94MF, the former senior vice president at the Open Space Institute (OSI), has been appointed as the next commissioner of the New York state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Kulleseid steps into the role in place of Rose Harvey ’84MES, who is stepping down after eight years as commissioner. Kulleseid cofounded OSI, an initiative that supports New York parks by integrating private funding into improvement projects and enhancing the visitor experience of New York’s parks and protected areas. Kulleseid will oversee the completion of Governor Cuomo’s ten-year, $900 million plan to restore New York’s state parks and historic sites by 2020. One colleague credited Harvey with guiding the New York parks system through “a renaissance unlike any other we’ve seen in recent times,” including the largest capital increase in state parks in generations, a 23-percent increase in park visitation, and the launch of the 750-mile Empire State Trail, which will be the longest of its kind in the country.

Research reveals strategies for combating science misinformation

Just as the scientific community was reaching a consensus on the dangerous reality of climate change, the partisan divide on climate change began to widen, says Justin Farrell, an assistant professor of sociology at F&ES. That might seem like a paradox, he says, but it’s also no coincidence. It was around this time that an organized network started to coalesce around the goal of undercutting the legitimacy of climate science. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Farrell and two coauthors illustrate how a large-scale misinformation campaign has eroded public trust in climate science and stalled efforts to achieve meaningful policy, but also how an emerging field of research is providing new insights into this critical dynamic. In the paper, they identify potential strategies to confront these misinformation campaigns across four related areas—public inoculation, legal strategies, political mechanisms, and financial transparency.