Academic

I began conducting research on local ecological knowledge in 1997-98 with the Keekonyokie Maasai and Dorobo around Hell’s Gate National Park/Oloor Karian, Kenya. My master’s research carried out between 2003 and 2005 also engaged aspects of this topic with Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) around Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, USA. My doctoral research was conducted between 2004 and 2008 with the Khumbu Sherpa inside Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone (SNPBZ), Nepal—including 19 months of fieldwork and 2 months of local and national-level presentations about the results. My work with the Khumbu Sherpa and SNPBZ remains ongoing, which I recently updated in the summer of 2011. In 2008, I initiated three new projects with Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) nations and the U.S. Forest and Fish and Wildlife Services. These efforts focus on government-to-government consultation (e.g., compliance with federal policy), interpretive program planning (e.g., collaborative research and design of visitors centers) and collaborative resource stewardship (e.g., multi-generational pine nut harvests). Lastly, in 2015, I initiated a new project on social-ecological transitions after the 2015 Nepal earthquakes.