naturalist

As a naturalist I am perennially in awe of the diverse forms of life I encounter. As an ecologist I use this awe of encountered life as a springboard to considering the ways nature's complexity organizes into a self-balancing system. It is in this pursuit of understanding nature, testing our proposed understandings, and spreading the joy of its encounters that I increasingly focus my efforts.

I developed interest in and appreciation of nature and ecological systems via my anthropological interests in human evolution, behavior, and human relationships with the natural world. Humans have always depended on nature's biodiversity for their survival, and despite the industrial obfuscation of this truth from modern people’s daily experiences in complex market societies, human wellbeing will continue to depend on the wellbeing of nature. As David Attenborough reports in A Life on Our Planet (and as shown in the plot below), “A sixth mass extinction is well underway”. Though the quadratic trend line below explains 99% of the wilderness variation reported for 1937, 1954, 1960, 1978, 1997, and 2020, it need not be a model that accurately predicts loss of most life on Earth for the next generation. There is hope yet if we can rewild by inviting nature back into our suburban and urban spaces, by practicing natural farming, and by allowing nature to thrive without human interference in wild places.

In 2021, after completing the Desert Sands and Sky Islands California Naturalist course I was certified as a California Naturalist by the University of California Riverside. Since 2021 I have been making regular photographed contributions of organismal observations via iNaturalist (linked below), while participating in several iNaturalist projects (e.g. 2021 California Desert Naturalists, Moths of California, Coachella Valley Fire Followers, Project Porch-Light), and collaborating with the University of California Riverside Palm Desert Center’s Center for Conservation Biology Research Team. I manage two southern California based iNaturalists projects where I am cataloguing the diversity of life encountered: Nature at Home in Mentone and Fremont Peak Bowl Refugium.

* Within a week of posting this page and the figure above, my nephew coincidentally gifted me a collaged wooden horse he had made: legs, neck, and head wrapped in world maps and nature scenes, a hamburger featured on one side, and the other side bearing the words, "The world in 2070"!