Jake Goheen UW Faculty Senate Speaker April 25

Jake Goheen, a University of Wyoming Department of Zoology and Physiology associate professor, will discuss wildlife conservation efforts in Kenya as part of the UW Faculty Senate Speaker Series Wednesday, April 25.

Goheen will discuss “Wildlife conservation in human-occupied landscapes: three improbable stories from East Africa” at 4:10 p.m. in the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center auditorium. His lecture is free and open to the public.

The Faculty Senate Speaker Series is an award established by Faculty Senate that is awarded to a fall and a spring semester recipient each academic year. Nominations are open to all faculty and academic professionals, and the award carries an honorarium of $1,000. Recipients also are required to speak in Casper.

Goheen will discuss the same topic Thursday, April 19, at 1 p.m. in Room 421 of the Union/University Building at Casper College.

In his research in East Africa, the Intermountain West and other rangelands throughout the world, wildlife conservation and human livelihoods sometimes are compatible, Goheen says. He will discuss three examples of his UW students’ and his own research in Kenya. That research is being implemented to bolster on-the-ground conservation efforts.

Those include conservation efforts of the world’s most endangered antelope, hirola, in an area of civil conflict; using cattle ranching as a tool to remotely control where and what lions hunt; and working to understand how trees defend themselves against elephants, resulting in the rerouting of funds toward anti-poaching squads and black rhino conservation.

“At first glance, these examples seem different from each other, but common denominators exist,” Goheen says. “All were implemented in human-occupied landscapes through a combination of targeted management; all required collaboration with Kenyan students and local communities; and all involved blind luck.”

Goheen’s overall projects with his on-campus groups have been carried out in the United States, Mozambique and Iran, but most of his and the UW students’ work occurs in Kenya, where he has worked for 15 years. He has long-standing interests in the ecology, conservation and natural history of wild mammals, as well as in enhancing educational infrastructure for wildlife conservation in East Africa.

His work has included the development of field courses for UW and Kenyan undergraduates and the establishment of endowed funds to support African students working with wild animals through the American Society of Mammologists.

Goheen has become a bridge builder between research in Africa and UW. He has helped mentor students from Africa, and he has supported UW students to travel to Africa for research. Goheen also has created and maintained a long-term ecological experiment with his Kenyan partners.

For more information about the Faculty Senate Speaker Series, call Amy Kopp, Faculty Senate coordinator, at (307) 766-5348.