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Healthy Planet

The Road to Ecosystem Safeguards

“This new tool will help speed up transportation projects while beefing up environmental stewardship.”

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Healthy Planet Stewardship

Bug Problems? Call in the Chickens

Betsey Miller and her colleagues at Oregon State University (Extension and Department of Horticulture) brought the pest-seeking fowl to La Mancha’s Brooklane Organic Apple Orchard in Corvallis to conduct a pilot study on the use of free-range poultry for biodynamic pest control.

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Healthy Planet Stewardship Student Research

Horns of Africa

In the place where Dylan McDowell grew up, wildlife meant sea lions, sandpipers, salmon and passing pods of spouting whales. Where he’s going this summer, wildlife means something else entirely, something reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, exotic and fearsome: wildebeests, jackals, baboons, leopards, warthogs. And rhinos that have been poached nearly to extinction.

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Healthy Planet Stewardship Student Research

Sea Urchin

On her first-ever research trip, Caitlyn Clark trudged up and down hundreds of spongy hummocks spanning miles of arctic tundra, all the while swatting at giant mosquitoes and scanning for hungry polar bears. She was in Manitoba to collect data about the habitats of boreal frogs and stickleback fish for Earthwatch Institute Student Challenge Awards Program.

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Healthy Economy Stewardship

Relay for Wheat

When he was a college student, Bob Zemetra found the perfect career. “I liked working with plants, and I realized that in plant breeding — in theory — I could be outside in the good part of the year and inside in the bad part of the year.” Things didn’t turn out that way, he laughs. “I discovered with winter wheat, I’m planting in rain and snow, and I’m out taking data in rain.”

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Healthy Planet Stewardship Student Research

Fisher of Rivers

A river runs through Haley Ohms’ life. Actually, a whole bunch of rivers. So spending the summer hip-deep in fast-moving water will feel familiar to the Oregon State University graduate student — even if those cold, tumbling waters flow on the other side of the Pacific Rim. The fish will seem familiar, too. The Dolly Varden, which she’ll be studying in 10 woodland streams on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, is a cousin of steelhead and rainbow trout, the topic of her master’s thesis in the Department of Fish and Wildlife.