The Ecologist Puns

Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, a wildlife ecologist with an expertise in uncovering how human activity influences carnivore behavior and ecology. I have been studying the world's most threatened mammals for more than 15 years across six of the seven continents.

I received a B.S. in Environmental Studies from Emory University, a M.S. in Environmental Studies from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Columbia University. I am currently a Research Faculty member at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management leading carnivore research on the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve. I am also a National Geographic Explorer, and a Visiting Scientist at the American Museum of Natural History.

My latest venture is a podcast from PBS Nature called "Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant." In it I tell my stories from the field, from encountering giraffe poachers while tracking lion cubs in Tanzania, to discovering never-before-seen population of the world's most endangered lemur in Madagascar, to giving CPR to a hibernating black bear in Minnesota. My hope is to encourage the next generation of wildlife ecologists. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'll be on at 11 am PST/2 pm EST/19 UT to answer your questions. Ask me anything!

Username: /u/rae_wg21

I'm dreading the start of the winter here in the Midwest of the US. I'm typically a pretty outdoorsy person in the warmer parts of the year. I love going herping and birding in my off time. Obviously, the winter provides little to no opportunities for herps, and a pretty boring composition of birds after awhile. And this winter/next year, I want to branch out.

I'm asking you all, hopefully a fun question, what are some of your winter hobbies that may be of interests to those in your field (ecology)? I need some creative juices flowing, and I'm hoping you all can help stimulate that if you're willing to entertain me.

Please help me out!

P.S. all indoor/outdoor hobby suggestions would be appreciated, but I'm definitely more fond of the latter myself.

As ecologist are scientists related to the Zone, what happens if one tries to get out of the Zone? Does he get terminated or is he just sent back with the vow to keep silence?

I’ve narrowed my last Endemic Life down to a Fortune Owl I must’ve originally messed up taking photos of. I double checked the rest of the Endemic Life I took pictures of today to make sure my Cohoot camera registered their names too.

I already have the Silver Ecologist Award and just got the Copper Award today. Anyone had the same issue? Is it still a bug maybe?

I’m probably not even going to waste time waiting for the Owl to spawn, I’ll just book it if one spawns during a quest I’m actually in the middle of.

So, I ran into another weird bug. I do the Escort quest for the Jupiter bunker, and I take the ecos back to their base. I talk to them, end dialogue, but the quest that's completed is the Anomalous Research from Sakharov over in Yantar. The ecologist companions don't disappear, I get no reward and now I'm stuck with two ecologists following me around. Escort The Ecologists is still on my quest log.

Audio snippet: Colin talking about bumping into a big male chimpanzee

Colin is a Primatologist, Conservation Scientist, Anthropologist, and Field Biologist. He's a Professor at George Washington University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Member of the Committee of Research and Exploration at National Geographic, and an Associate Scientist of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.

He is Director of the long term Kibale Monkey Project in Uganda, founded in 1989, the project focuses on primate ecology and conservation, amongst lots of other things, including the union of local healthcare and conservation. Colin established a clinic in Kibale to treat the health needs of the local people, he even imported an ambulance from Canada!

We talk about all things primates, nature, ecology, the environment, conservation, healthcare, and Colin shares some of his more memorable interactions with primates and other wildlife.

More about Colin: http://www.chapmancolin.com/

The episode is available wherever you normally listen to podcasts, or as a video on YouTube.

All links via: https://linktr.ee/HaveYouMet

Episode on YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/r-ZeYnEzoNs

Thank you for reading & listening/watching -- have a great week!!

Hi Reddit! We are Cristina and Jenna, tropical rainforest ecologists at Imperial College London working in Amazonian Brazil and Costa Rica. Ask us Anything!

We'll be answering your questions until 6 PM UK time / 1 PM Eastern time.

Proof - https://twitter.com/ImperialSpark/status/1386945780255182851

The planet is going through an unprecedented rate of species loss. Last year a United Nations report concluded as many as 1 million species are at risk of going extinct in the coming decades at a rate 1000 times higher because of human action.

The tropics are at the frontline of this crisis. They are home to 75 percent of all species and 40 percent of the human population, many of whom live in poverty and rely on working the land to make a living. We urgently need to find ways to combine biodiversity conservation with human welfare.

As tropical ecologists, we work with authorities such as the Brazilian government to advise on policy-change that seeks to avoid biodiversity extinction. To do this we need to understand what exactly is driving species to go extinct and what the impact their disappearance has on the environments they leave behind. With this information, we can identify critical thresholds for forest loss to further inform policy, and we plan ‘wildlife corridors’ to help species navigate around humans and our expanding tropical agriculture such as palm oil and teak plantations.

In Brazil, Cristina’s work led to the Brazilian government’s adoption of a 30 percent forest cover threshold across the country’s Atlantic Forest region. While in Costa Rica, Jenna has been part of a team setting up over 400 audio devices to record the sounds of the rainforest. We then used machine learning to pick out and track the calls of the forest’s endangered spider monkeys as well as getting a wider picture of local biodiversity loss.

During this AMA we’re happy to talk about the drivers of deforestation and how the resulting biodiversity loss plays out on the ground. We can discuss the limitations of reforestation solutions, and why you can’t ‘make up' for cutting down rainforest by planting trees elsewhere. Instead, we can discuss a more sustainable way forward which both preserves species and benefits local economies.

For more information

• Cristina talks about the forests of her homeland in São Paulo and how her work on it was adopted by the Brazilian government - [https://www.timeshi