I enjoy sharing my love of nature and science through writing, painting, photography, teaching, public speaking and guiding.
My books, Bird Love and Understanding Bird Behavior/ How to Read A Bird, use scientific discoveries to show how much humans and birds share, including some of art and literature’s most basic themes. My ultimate aim is to inspire as many people as possible to relate to and care for the natural world. For more, here’s an interview.
I’m currently working on two books that more explicitly address environmental issues. One draws on my personal relationships with ranching families in the rangelands of Kenya, Zambia, and Montana to tell stories about these places and their people, their biological and cultural histories, and their solutions to coexisting sustainably with important and underappreciated biomes. The second is a collaboration with a friend on using different yet complementary ways of knowing to address major problems like the climate crisis. Specifically, we will discuss synergies and convergences across the fields of biology, law, and information technology to understand concepts common to all, like cooperation and property.
Birdwatching offered me an early and very personal connection with urban nature as a child in Singapore, and I have been a keen supporter of grassroots conservation ever since. My time as an undergraduate at Princeton and Oxford was where I first got hooked on field biology and the history and philosophy of science and the environment. I am currently a research associate at Harvard, where I got my PhD in biology. Whether it has been studying zebras in Kenya, catching mice in Bulgaria, or observing birds in the grasslands of Zambia and Montana, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the natural world, and to human friends from many cultures. My hope is to share some of these biocultural connections with others.
I enjoy teaching university students in Montana and Alaska, fundraising for conservation organisations, and guiding natural history tours in Tanzania, Central Asia, the Galapagos, and Montana, where I take visitors birding on horseback. I also work with writers like Pat Mora to champion environmental appreciation and literacy across ages and cultures, and actively support organizations like BirdLife International, Nia Tero and the Clark Fork Coalition to promote an inclusive and grassroots driven form of conservation for diverse cultural and ecological communities to coexist sustainably.
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