Hello! Thanks for visiting! This site is still under construction- so apologies for the mess...

Creative Conservation Science

People and Wildlife

Our team work on understanding, managing and enhancing the interactions between people and wildlife in human-dominated systems like cities, suburbs, and farms.

Conservation Challenges

We tackle conservation challenges from new perspectives. Read about our current efforts on Conservation Funding and Rapid Assessments. 

Education and Outreach

Learn about our school-based and online education programs, ask one of us to speak to your corporate or industry group, Or, come birding with us.

News

July 2021
Our research (alongside many of Ryan Bourbour's incredible photography) was featured in this months' Living Bird Magazine
June 2021
Students from the Kross lab and E3B have started an Environmental Justice and Urban Ecology Summer Research Program with the Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School. Undergraduate and graduate students are working with high school students to describe and understand the ecology of restored and un-restored sites in two NYC Parks. Dr. Kross is helping with study design/ education goals... and permitting.
June 2021
Laura Plimpton's paper: Use of molecular scatology to assess the diet of feral cats living in urban colonies has been accepted at the Journal of Urban Ecology! Congratulations Laura!
June 2021
Andie Muñoz is starting fieldwork on a project funded by the Hudson Valley Farm Hub to understand the effects of a single bird community on multiple crop types (including pest control, bird damage, diet, and possibly food safety).
June 2021
Daniel Mathisson's review paper (co-authored by Sara Kross); Effect of vegetation on the abundance of tick vectors in the Northeastern United States: A review of the literature, was published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. [PDF]
June 2021
We've had a paper rejected- but have resubmitted it to another great journal. Rejection is part of the process, and it isn't failure.
May 2021
Sara Kross is a co-author on a new paper with Hilary Byerly, Meredith Niles, and Brendan Fisher: Applications of behavioral science to biodiversity management in agricultural landscapes: conceptual mapping and a California case study- published in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. [PDF]
May 2021
Katie Maffett just wrapped up a very intense month of fieldwork, quantifying the behavioral responses of nesting American Oystercatchers on NYC beaches in collaboration with NYC Audubon. Great work Katie!
May 2021
Congratulations to Jason Hagani and Sarah Trabue for graduating from the E3B MA Program!
April 2021
Sara Kross' co-authored a paper led by Bea Maas, Yvonne Fabian, and Annett Richter, Divergent farmer and scientist perceptions of agricultural biodiversity, ecosystem services and decision-making, was published in Biological Conservation.
This work was covered by Horizons Magazine (The EU's Science and Innovation Magazine)- and you can read the press release about it here.
March 2021
We had an awesome conversation with Maya Higa- watch this space for news about science education collaboration in the future.
October 2020
Our team was awarded a Diversity Initiative Grant from the Columbia Arts and Sciences Graduate Council for our project- E3Birders: The Manhattan Naturalists- seed funding to create K-12 education program for outdoor education in NYC Parks. Our team will take classes on walks in local parks to teach kids about urban wildlife, climate change, invasive species, and other conservation topics relevant to the management of parks. If you are an educator in NYC and interested in a nature-based education experience for your class in a local park, please email smk2258@columbia.edu. We will give priority to schools in northern manhattan (north of 100th st).
August 2020
Congratulations Sarah Trabue for receiving a 2020 Tibor T. Polgar Fellowship from the  Hudson River Foundation! Sarah's project Photo-Identification and Skin Lesion Prevalence of Bottlenose Dolphins in the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary is supervised by Howard Rosenbaum and Mindy Rekdahl at WCS.
July 2020
Breanna Martinico and Sara Kross presented our barn owl work at the Society for Conservation Biology's North American Conference on Conservation Biology and at the North American Ornithological Conference.
March 2020
Congratulations Jason Hagani for receiving a Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies Catskill Research Fellowship. Jason's project, Reducing Human-Black Bear Interactions in the Catskills through the Improved Education of Transient Visitors is supervised  by Sara Kross in collaboration with Larry Bifaro, Matthew Merchant, Michael Clark, and Jeremy Hurst from the NY Department of Environmental Conservation.