Our National Geographic Explorers

Since 1888, more than 15,000 scientists, storytellers, and educators—including many from UC Berkeley—have received grants from the National Geographic Society (NGS), one of the largest scientific and educational organizations in the world. Each grantee is dubbed an Explorer, a recognition of how their work furthers the Society’s mission of illuminating and protecting our world’s wonders. 

“UC Berkeley and NGS both understand the urgency of addressing global challenges relating to climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Justin Brashares, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) and member of the Society’s Committee on Research and Exploration. “These are areas in which many Rausser College of Natural Resources researchers are leading the way.” 

Here, we highlight a handful of the many Rausser College students, faculty, and alums affiliated with the Society.

Kendall Calhoun

Calhoun, PhD ’23 ESPM, received Society support in 2020 for research focused on understanding how ecological disturbances like wildfire impact the resilience of California’s wildlife communities. He conducted fieldwork at the UC Hopland Research and Extension Center, a 5,358-acre living laboratory in Northern California that burned during the Mendocino Complex Fire in 2018.

Learn more about Calhoun's background and research in National Geographic. 

Brian Kastl

Kastl, PhD ’23 ESPM, was named an Explorer in 2018 while conducting research on the seaward migration of juvenile coho salmon. His studies of Northern California’s Russian River highlighted how drought and climate change have shrunk the migration window of salmon, threatening the species’ population.

Damian Elias

Professor Elias received a grant to study peacock spider evolution and behavior in Australia in 2015. His research helped document the genus’ (Maratus) elaborate courtship rituals, which involve a coordinated song-and-dance display using a colorful set of abdominal flaps and leg tufts.

Alejandra Echeverri

Now an assistant professor in ESPM, Echeverri received a Society grant in 2016 in support of her doctoral fieldwork in Costa Rica, which was focused on the cultural value of birds. She studied the characteristics that make birds more prone to be liked or disliked by people, finding that people prefer forest-affiliated birds.

Christopher Schell

An urban ecologist and ESPM assistant professor, Schell studies how urban attributes and social inequities affect wildlife and people in cities. His work, which is supported by the Society’s Wayfinder Award, combines wildlife cameras with movement ecology techniques to investigate how human activities, food subsidies, and disease prevalence impact coyote behavior and conflicts across the Bay Area.

Listen to Schell discuss San Francisco's urban coyotes on KQED, and learn more about his urban ecology research in bioGraphic magazine. 

Arthur Middleton

Professor Middleton’s relationship with National Geographic stretches back to 2013, when the Society awarded him a grant to study the relationship between pumas and vicuñas in the Argentinian Andes. His research on large-scale conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho was supported by a 2017 fellowship. He is currently working with the Society on a three-year study of wolves in California.

Watch a short film about Middleton's Yellowstone research featuring his collaborators, photographer Joe Riis and artist James Prosek.

Christine Wilkinson

Wilkinson, PhD ’22 ESPM, became an explorer in 2018 while a graduate student in the Brashares lab. She leverages remote sensing and GIS analyses with participatory mapping to understand human-wildlife interaction and conflict among hyenas in and around Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya.

Learn more about Wilkinson's background and research in National Geographic.

Sam Maher

Maher, a PhD candidate in the lab of Professor Arthur Middleton, received a grant to study the collection of shed antlers in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2022. The collection of scavenged wildlife resources like antlers, which has grown more popular, has the potential to influence wildlife behavior, but these resources are understudied relative to their conservation significance.

Take an in-depth look at Maher's research, and read more about her survey results in WyoFile.

Becca Brunner

Brunner, PhD ’22 ESPM, conducted fieldwork across Ecuador for part of her PhD, studying how human disturbance and habitat degradation affect local frog populations. Since becoming an Explorer in 2019, Brunner has described two species of glass frogs near active mining sites and documented the first case of a glass frog using both acoustic and visual signals to attract a mate—an adaptation that allows them to communicate within their loud waterfall habitat.

Mei Zhang

Explorer and third-year ESPM graduate student Mei Zhang conducts fieldwork along the Tea Horse Trail in Yunnan, China, a historic artery of cultural, social, and economic importance that now faces rapid degradation. Zhang’s ethnographic research aims to document current trail usage to demonstrate the trails’ cultural significance, and continued use helps to protect biodiversity.

Learn more about Zhang's efforts to restore the Tea Horse Trail—and other largely forgotten paths across China—in this recent National Geographic feature.