Blogs

May and June of 2019 were busy months filled with educational and outreach activities here at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. The activities and everyone I have met in the Jasper Ridge community made me feel both the 1975 spirit that has persisted since the educational programs began and the 21st century energy of our current students! Our educational programs were... more

The Jasper Ridge herbarium team has monitored plants on the Preserve for 25 years carrying on the fieldwork tradition of Herb Dengler, John Thomas and many prominent botanists, spanning 150 years. Because the local flora is rich, the rewards of fieldwork are reaped year after year as plants and docents come and go. In October, Diane Renshaw and Rebecca Reynolds... more

Counting ants is a study in irony and mindfulness. And why would you count them anyway? The answer lies in human curiosity and our quest to understand just what is wild. For 25 years, each spring and each fall, a dedicated group of volunteers – scientists, naturalists, and citizen scientists – has counted the ants in Jasper Ridge. They have... more

Birds are the only terrestrial animal group that connects the globe. This may partly explain why they so captivate the imagination of humans: the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013 estimated that there are 47 million bird-watchers in the United States alone. Some birds, like the red knot, travel tens of thousands of miles between the poles each year... more

As was mentioned on multiple fronts by my peers throughout the summer, a critical component of our experience and journey was dedicated not only to us learning about the work being done in Botswana already by other organizations, but also about the peoples and cultures of the areas we were visiting. As a group, we prepared by learning the history... more

Jordana and I are making our way back to Stanford from Cape Town, South Africa, after an incredible fact-finding mission to explore current conservation priorities in Africa to help inform how the ‘Out-of-the-Box Into-the-Cloud’ initiative at Jasper Ridge can make a meaningful impact. One of those arenas is in formulating tools to help us identify the location of where traded... more

This journey blended a diversity of students and perspectives. The Stanford participants had the goal of learning about the problems people and nature face in remote regions, mentoring in field settings, and testing a variety of cutting-edge field equipment. The University of Illinois undergraduates were taking a course designed and developed by us (Meyer and Morgan) in connection with conservation... more

We google, we analyze reports, read scientific papers, follow trends and calculate stats on the well-being of the planet’s flora and fauna, all the while judging and contemplating communities attempting to coexist with wildlife. We often romanticize working in these regions, however being far removed from the realities of the hardships and unpredictability of working in these spaces. We had... more

The last day of field work is often bittersweet for us, blending the lingering excitement of new discoveries with a tinge of regret that comes from knowing that in just a couple of days, the splash of the Milky Way across the Southern Cross will no longer be our bedtime ceiling, and our morning wake-up will be the beep of... more

Recently, I had the opportunity to join a group of intrepid students and professors who were making Botswana their classroom. The incoming flight from Maun to Xakanaka gave a spectacular perspective of the region. While it is considered winter right now (the dry season), one could see an incredible amount of water in intricate networks interlacing the region. From this... more