This is a recent article written by Madeline Frieze ’20 M.E.M. for the publication New Directions in Outdoor Recreation, created by the Outdoor Recreation SIG at F&ES. It features Ski na Rua, an NGO in a favela in São Paulo, Brazil, aimed at teaching low income youth in the community to cross-country ski on pavement. It was founded by Leandro Ribela, two-time Olympic cross-country skier and Brazil’s cross-country ski coach for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
His heart thumped as he considered the well-groomed ski course ahead of him. Victor Santos, wearing the uniform of his home country of Brazil, fidgeted at the starting gate of the 15km freestyle cross country ski race at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. At 20 years old, he had made it to the world…
Written by Kylee Chang (MEM’19)
I am Kylee Chang, a second-year MEM candidate expecting to graduate in May. At F&ES, I am studying industrial ecology and business and the environment. This year, I have learned immensely from my collaboration with both F&ES and SOM students on participating in the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge.
Since 2010, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing have been inviting graduate students from around the world to create innovative financial instruments that address critical social and environmental issues. This year’s competition received the most applicants yet: from 109 teams across 80 graduate schools in 50 countries. My team was chosen as one of the top 12 teams to fly to Hong
During the Alumni TGIF (“Thank Goodness I’m a Forester” event at F&ES) last October, I shared with Gao, a Ph.D. candidate from China, my interest in learning about the environmental footprint of Chinese investments overseas. Despite my passion, I had little experience in the topic at the time and had no idea where to start looking for resources. Gao immediately introduced me to Dr. Helen Gichohi, the McCluskey Fellow at F&ES, at the Alumni Event. Helen is a renowned scholar from Kenya and wildlife conservation field practitioner – also former President of African Wildlife Foundation (AWF). I expressed my interest to Helen and made quick connections with her along with two other classmates, American and Ugandan students who shared a similar passion for the subject. As our interest overlapped with…
When Monte Kawahara, an FES alum and forester for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) visited New Haven last fall to speak to the Fire Science and Policy class, his perspective on mitigating fire risk and battling wildfire on BLM lands in California sparked the interest of Leana Weissberg, a 2nd year Master of Environmental Science candidate. When Leana spoke with Monte after class, seeking advice on paving a career path in western forest ecology, Monte pitched an idea that would provide hands-on experience in western forest management issues: a month-long student-led trip to work on BLM lands in California.
FES students jumped at the chance to gain insight into western forest ecology issues and field experience within a federal land management agency. Four students, Emily Dolhansky (MFS ’18) Leonora…
During the October fall break, a group of roughly 30 students from three Yale graduate schools (FES, School of Management, and Public Health) traveled to Quito, Ecuador. The majority of these students were FES-ers, who 1) attended the UN Habitat III conference as accredited stakeholders and 2) either presented research related to urban resilience or participated in a consultancy project.
The UN Habitat III conference was a unique occurrence. It is an event that only happens every 20 years, where national and subnational governments gather to discuss urban development. In this past Habitat, the New Urban Agenda was adopted. This is a guidance document that will dictate how urbanization will occur worldwide, and encompasses many areas including but not limited to social inclusion, ending poverty, environmentally sustainable…
There are now fewer tigers in the wild than there are graduate students at Yale. Around 3,500 tigers, to be precise, dispersed throughout nine countries across Asia, and declining by the day. One of the greatest threats to tigers is retaliation from villagers after attacks on livestock. But to be fair, living with tigers in your backyard isn’t easy. Tiger attacks on livestock cause major income losses for pastoralists – up to 80 percent in some villages — threatening people’s livelihoods and personal safety. Yet this chain of conflict — cat kills cow, cow’s owner kills cat – is quickly emptying the jungles of the world’s most magnificent carnivore.
In an effort to curb this human-tiger conflict, I focused my Ph.D. on developing a tool to predict future attacks…
Before graduating from F&ES last month, Gao Yufang M.E.Sc. ’14 focused his studies on the global ivory trade, with an emphasis on the complex role of his native China.
Gao — who will return to China this month, along with two African conservationists, to explore the country’s ivory markets — recently spoke with National Geographic about the complexities of the ivory market and the role of young people in curbing the slaughter of Africa’s elephants.
He also talks about why he decided to focus on this issue in the first place.
When I came to Yale in September 2012, everyone was talking about ivory trade. As a Chinese in the U.S. who understood how the conservation community in China works, I was seeing a great gap in…
Jamie Collins ’11 M.E.Sc., who is now a graduate student in a joint program between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, had just started blogging about a research trip to Antarctica when the government shutdown threatened to stop his work before it began.
In fact, on Oct. 8 — the day he arrived at Palmer Station on the West Antarctic Peninsula — he learned that the National Science Foundation was effectively cancelling all upcoming U.S. research activities in Antarctica.
But the last-minute resolution in Congress has salvaged the mission. On his blog today, Collins reported the good news: “Science is (almost) rolling again down here on the ice.”
The sense of relief on station is palpable — members of the various science teams are…
