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CORVALLIS - Conservationist Michael Dombeck will address the biggest conservation challenges of the new century in an April 16 talk at Oregon State University. Dombeck's lecture, "The Big Ten Conservation Challenges for a New Century: Where Do We Go from Here," starts at 7:30 p.m. in OSU's LaSells Stewart Center, 26th Street and Western Boulevard. The event is free and open to the public.

Dombeck, who served as chief of the U.S. Forest Service during the Clinton administration, was the first Forest Service chief to grow up on a national forest. His parents ran a general store in the Chequamego National Forest in northern Wisconsin. As Forest Service chief, Dombeck closed almost 60 million acres of national forest land to road building. He closed parts of the Rocky Mountains to mining. And he began a massive effort to map, catalog and preserve some of the nation's old growth forests. In 2001, he was honored with the National Wildlife Federation's National Conservation Achievement Award.

Environmentalists widely hailed him as revolutionary hero. Timber and mining interests, on the other hand, reviled Dombeck's policies, charging they would cost jobs and sap the economic vitality of whole regions.

Dombeck's top issues for his talk range from mining laws and loss of biodiversity to off-road vehicle use.

The April 16 presentation is the final event in OSU's Convocations and Lecture Committee's 2002-03 series. The first speaker in the series, Indian activist and outspoken critic of biotechnology Vandana Shiva, addressed the issue "Earth Democracy: Creating Alternatives for Peace, Democracy and Justice" on Nov. 20; the second speaker, Horace Freeland Judson, spoke Jan. 15 on the "Continuing Revolution in Biology."

The OSU Convocations and Lectures Committee sponsors three or four major speakers each academic year. The topics selected by the committee are intended to broaden the intellectual and spiritual knowledge of the community.