Here’s your SCHEDULE, PROGRAM & SPECIAL POSTER INSERT

SERCAL 2025: The Annual Conference of the California Society for Ecological Restoration, April 21-23 in Sacramento at the DoubleTree 

Join 300+ participants from throughout California (and beyond) as we forge partnerships and share strategies 

Every year, SERCAL brings together the leaders and brainpower from the restoration industry, agencies, partners, NGOs, academics, vendors, and the Next Generation of students and emerging professionals. 

From fieldtrips on April 21, to keynotes, panels, and presentations April 22-23, SERCAL's annual conference is the place to gather and explore our options, challenges, and opportunities for creating a more resilient California. Our collective efforts are essential for learning, moving forward, and bringing about positive change — no matter the scope of our work, no matter the challenges we face.  

Be the Delta / Be the Change

Whether your focus is mitigation, restoring degraded landscape, research, creation of habitat corridors, or healthier urban ecosystems... Whether you have two-plus decades of experience or two-plus decades of life on this earth… 

We invite you to share your hard-won answers, the mistakes along the way, and the problems you have yet to solve at SERCAL’s 2025 Annual Conference in Sacramento. 

Here’s the plan

April 22-23 will be held in the beautiful ballrooms at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento. During the day we'll have a mix of keynotes, panels, and session blocks, with time for breaks to absorb it all or for networking. This is our conference hotel with lodging discounts, and we'll serve up an ala carte breakfast, lunch, snacks, and an evening reception on Tuesday night. 

There will be 4-5 hour-long blocks per day and, except for keynote presentations, they will be broken into three concurrent sessions. Session blocks are either a 60-minute panel OR three 15-minute presentations with 15 minutes at the end for Q&A. The Poster Session Reception will be held the first evening (April 22). 

HOW PEOPLE ARE PARTICIPATING AND GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THEIR TIME:

Exhibit as a Sponsoring Member | Present your work as a talk or poster | Get warmed up for the conference on one of our fabulous fieldtrips! | Make a Difference! Become a Torchbearer to a rising star from the Next Generation

Thank you!! We are super excited and look forward to seeing you! 

How our community supports the next generation

stipends, lodging, rideshares, and sponsoring as torchbearers

Are you NextGen or Tribal member and short on cash for making this happen? Go ahead and register — we've integrated the stipend application process into registration. We will do our best to provide as many stipends as we can for travel, get you a bed to sleep on, and provide free registration if you present (a poster) and/or volunteer.  We want you there!!

We can provide at least 80 waived registrations; we are hoping our amazing community will bump up this year’s Next Gen Fund and/or share lodging and carpooling opportunities. THANK YOU TO OUR HEROES, Ross Taylor and Associates, GEI Consultants, SWCA, and Native West Nursery for supporting the Next Generation!.

Need your arm twisted? See what we were able to accomplish at last year’s conference!

ALL ABOUT Presenting & it’s time to upload your technical or lightning talk!

Technical Session Presenters should typically plan on a 15-minute turnaround. There will be a Q&A panel at the end of each session. The link above will collect both your presentation and your bio. Please upload no later than April 17 if at all possible! A confirmation message will appear after you upload. Please try not to email the person behind the curtain (wink, that’s Julie). Just to be on the safe side, you are encouraged to bring a thumb drive. But it will make things go a lot smoother for all parties if you can finalize by the 17th. ;-)

Lightning Talk Presenters should plan on a 4-5 minute presentation with a maximum of 5 slides — this is a great opportunity for first-time presenters! Please upload no later than April 17 if at all possible. A confirmation message will appear after you upload. Please try not to email the person behind the curtain (wink, that’s Julie). Just to be on the safe side, you are encouraged to bring a thumb drive. But it will make things go a lot smoother for all parties if you can finalize by the 16th. ;-)

Poster Presenters! SERCAL is providing easels, clips, and poster boards which will accommodate posters that are 4 feet wide by 3 feet tall. You can set up your poster either Monday night (5-6:30pm) or Tuesday morning (7-8:15am). During the Poster Session Reception (Tuesday, 6-8pm), you should plan on a one-minute “elevator speech” style intro for people who stop by your poster, and of course to answer their questions and comments.