I specialize in making the science behind natural resource and conservation issues come alive for a general audience. For the past twelve years, I've written about everything from sewage recycling to endangered species protection to the evolution of amphibious human-powered vehicles. I'm a contributing editor at OnEarthmagazine, and write regularly forNational Wildlife, BioScience,Wildlife Conservation, and New Scientist. My work has also appeared in Natural History, Audubon, Nature, High Country News and Discovery Channel Online. I'm now at work on a popular science trade book, under a contract with Oxford University Press.
My writing draws on my decade of experience working as a field biologist in northern California. In those days I kept odd hours with spotted owls, censused migratory birds, quested after rare amphibians, studied the impact of pollution on wetlands, and dissected the immune responses of trout.
I graduated from the University of Illinois/Champaign with a degree in Biology in 1982, and earned a M.S. in Environmental Toxicology at Oregon State University in 1988. My graduate research focused on the effects of pollutants on immune responses, but after two years at the lab bench I fled to the woods.
I live in Humboldt County, California, with my husband Hugh Scanlon and daughter Maya.
