ENVIRONMENT – Sustainability expert Gloria Flora will be in Spokane this week to discuss how women worldwide are confronting the challenge of climate change.

The free public lecture titled, “If You Can’t Stand the Heat: Women and the Global Response to Climate Change” at 5:30 p.m., Friday (March 22) in the Wolff Auditorium of Gonzaga University's Jepson Center.

The lecture is part of the Gonzaga Environmental Studies Speaker Series -- which recently sponsored Dr. Jane Goodall -- and is sponsored by the Gonzaga environmental studies, and women’s and gender studies departments.

Read on for more details about Flora and her quest to keep flora and fauna functioning on earth.

Flora founded Sustainable Obtainable Solutions in 2001 and serves as the organization’s executive director. The organization works to ensure the sustainability of public lands and the plant, animal and human communities that depend on them. In her 22-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, Flora became well known for her leadership in ecosystem management and for her courage and principles. As supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in north-central Montana, she made a landmark decision to prohibit natural gas leasing along the spectacular 356,000-acre Rocky Mountain Front near the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a place described as an American Serengeti for its abundant populations of wildlife, birds and fish.

The major projects of the SOS focus on large landscape conservation strategies; national and international climate change action planning (mitigation, adaptation and ecological carbon sequestration); and, promoting the sustainable production and use of biochar (through the U.S. Biochar Initiative).

At home, she and her husband, a permaculture instructor, are creating an edible forest garden. Flora has received multiple awards for her leadership, courage and environmental stewardship, including the naming of a new species of Tanzanian toad to honor her.