Animals in Translation
I grew up in the city of Chicago in proper city-kid fashion. My deepest connection to nature came walking my dog in the midst of midwestern thunderstorms or digging up worms and bits of scrap metal in the garden beds my mom crammed into our tiny backyard. A bird was a bird and a bug was a bug and while the lions at the Lincoln Park zoo where no doubt cool, my connection to animals ran deepest with dogs.
Dogs followed me as faithful companions throughout the early years of my life, where I was always most interested in their behavior and how I might be able to decipher it. I maintained a hobby interest in animal behavior through the first forays of my career, first as a professional athlete and then as a fundraising manager for an international non-profit, consuming a wide variety of literature of animal behavior and figuring out how to apply what I'd read to help ward off dogs chasing me on my bicycle (a stern GO HOME and a squirt to the face with a water bottle can do wonders!). This interest remained recreational until I came across Dr. Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation, a book that decisively changed the trajectory of my life.
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| A life long love of dogs shaped my path towards a career in wildlife biology. |
Dogs followed me as faithful companions throughout the early years of my life, where I was always most interested in their behavior and how I might be able to decipher it. I maintained a hobby interest in animal behavior through the first forays of my career, first as a professional athlete and then as a fundraising manager for an international non-profit, consuming a wide variety of literature of animal behavior and figuring out how to apply what I'd read to help ward off dogs chasing me on my bicycle (a stern GO HOME and a squirt to the face with a water bottle can do wonders!). This interest remained recreational until I came across Dr. Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation, a book that decisively changed the trajectory of my life.
Delighted to
discover that Dr. Grandin was a professor in the Animal Science department at
Colorado State University (CSU), just a short ways up the road from where I had been living, I enrolled at CSU. During my first semester, I
was drawn to a poster for The Wildlife Society and went to my first club
meeting where I was pleased to realize with no uncertainty that I had found my
home. Given my urban background, the fact that one could train to be a wildlife
biologist had never crossed my mind. Despite my naivete when it came to the
specifics of this field, I was enthralled; I threw myself into my studies and
began to find opportunities to gain experience and research direction.
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| Testing out coyote fladry (single strand of electric fencing with red flags attached) out in South Dakota's Badlands to mitigate coyote predation on endangered black-footed ferrets. |
Intrigued
by carnivores, coexistence, and the research process, I found opportunities to
engage with faculty in my department and gain the critical field skills necessary to study carnivores and their behavior. As I developed my research skills - first through B.S. and M.S. programs in wildlife biology at CSU and next as a Research Scientist working on the Predator-Prey Project for the University of Washington - I've grown a deep passion for both connecting people with the land, and providing wildlife managers, private landowners, and outdoor recreationists the tools and resources necessary to mitigate conflict with carnivores. My goal in co-founding Home Range Wildlife Research is to connect local communities with our organization's research and develop programs that foster human-carnivore cohabitation.
Becca is co-founder and Development Director for Home Range Wildlife Research. Read more about her role in the organization here.