Blog

  • A Week of Firsts!

    A Week of Firsts!

    Field work updates Field work has been in full swing since I last wrote. Last week, along with my students, I worked to finish the fence assessment and put up all of the camera traps. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite finish for several reasons: First, because the fence around the park is a lot longer than

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  • Hitting the Ground Running

    After a year (or more?!) of applying for numerous permits and grants, playing in the Bart station for extra research money, fine-tuning methodologies, and going through human subjects and animal care and use protocols, my dissertation field work has finally begun. I feel like I could write an entire blog post about the preparation process

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  • What’s in a Survey?

    What’s in a Survey?

    Since my time here in Tanzania is almost at an end, I figure it’s about time I write a post about what exactly I’ve been up to this whole time. A large chunk of my work here boils down to conducting a survey on the social implications of a human-wildlife conflict intervention. But there’s a

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  • Bush Showers, or, A Short PSA About Water Use

    Bush Showers, or, A Short PSA About Water Use

    Since I left for Tanzania on May 26th, I have had one hot shower, which was also my only shower in the past month in which I’ve used more than 1.3 gallons of water. Here at Noloholo Environmental Center, which is Tanzania People & Wildlife’s (TPW) headquarters in the Simanjiro District, water is scarce. The

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  • Community Conservation: A Maasai Chief’s Perspective

    Community Conservation: A Maasai Chief’s Perspective

    The Maasai people constitute one of the major ethnic groups living in Kenya and Tanzania. Having a pastoralist lifestyle, the Maasai rely heavily on their cattle, sheep, and goats for sustenance, and thus livestock are a Maasai family’s most valuable asset. You may have heard of the Maasai – among many other things, they are

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