In this guest post, Kellen Marshall, a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois, shares the challenges of combining her passions for environmental justice and ecological research.
“Being a native of Wisconsin – land of beer, brats, and polkas – I’ve always dreamed of delivering a science presentation with a drink in my hand.” — Lisa Schulte Moore writes about her new adventures in public outreach at the Science Cafe, and as a fellow in the Leopold Leadership program.
This guest post is by Holly Menninger, Director of Public Science for Your Wild Life at NC State University. Engage. Communicate. Reach out. Engage. Communicate. Reach out. These words echoed throughout the hallways of the Minneapolis Convention Center last week like a mantra. From organized symposia to high-energy Ignite sessions, ecologists both urged for and heard a rallying call to…
A guest post by Heather Lessig, a ConservationCorridor moderator and research technician in Nick Haddad’s lab at NC State LANDSCAPE corridors are among the most important conservation strategies in the face of global changes such as habitat fragmentation, habitat destruction, and climate change. Corridors are habitats that are typically long relative to their width, and they connect fragmented patches of…
Meretsky and colleagues propose a national conservation-support program to help knit together state level efforts and larger federal programs, such as the recently established Landscape Conservation Cooperatives delineated here, and prevent species from falling through the gaps.
This post contributed by Kellen Marshall-Gillespie, University of Illinois-Chicago, NSF-IGERT LEAP Fellow and 2011 ESA Graduate Student Policy Award winner. As an active member of the Ecological Society of America and its Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability (SEEDS) program and environmental justice (EJ) section, I understand and support the Society’s vested interest in accomplishing meaningful broader impacts. As…
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2009 Programme for the International Student Assessment results showed the United States ranking 19th in math and 14th in science out of 31 countries. Following this news, President Obama announced a $250 million proposal to increase funding for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. As he stated in his budget message, “In…
This post contributed by Cristina Eisenberg, conservation biologist at Oregon State University Over the past three years I have conducted thirteen hundred focal animal observations on elk in the northern and southern Rocky Mountains. This involves patiently watching one animal at a time for up to twenty minutes and recording its wariness–that is, the amount of time it spends with…
This post contributed by Ashwin Bhandiwad, marine biologist and filmmaker When my colleague and good friend Austin Gallagher told me he was thinking of starting a film festival focused on science and conservation, I relished the opportunity. Austin and I are graduate students and share a passion for the marine environment. Like all graduate students, we have had many conversations…
When it comes to information about climate change, we want to believe that most people make rational, informed decisions based on a careful analysis of data. The truth for many people, though, is that their main source for climate change information is their local broadcast meteorologist. Unfortunately, this information often comes in the few seconds before or after a weathercast when a news anchor might ask the meteorologist if an unusually warm winter day is a “sure sign of global warming.”