Members of my research group use a combination of ecology, economics, and policy research to find innovative ways to protect biodiversity around the world. Recent or ongoing projects include: studies of the impact of logging and oil-palm agriculture on biodiversity in Southeast Asia; impact of the cage-bird trade on Indonesian birds; conservation of migratory animals; factors affecting the distribution of birds along elevational gradients in the Himalayas; reforestation and forest recovery in China, Costa Rica, and Peru; and the impacts of hunting on wildlife in China and Brazil. Prior to joining the Princeton faculty in 2001, I served as senior ecologist with the Environmental Defense Fund (1991-2001) and The Wilderness Society (1986-1991). I am an avid birdwatcher who cannot forgive himself for missing the Hawaiian Crow in 1996, but who did see the last wild Spix’s Macaw in Brazil in 1993.

I am an interdisciplinary conservation scientist studying how broad transitions in agricultural land use affect the environment. Some of my research interests include (1) land abandonment as a low-cost opportunity to restore biodiversity and sequester carbon on unused farms, and (2) biodiversity metrics and prioritization methods to minimize the environmental impact of agricultural expansion.

I defended my dissertation in the STEP program in Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs in May 2022, and earned a BS in ecology & evolutionary biology from the University of Michigan in 2012. Prior to graduate school, I worked at the California NGO Sustainable Conservation on collaborative projects to (1) stop the sale of invasive plants in horticulture and (2) reduce regulatory and financial barriers preventing river restoration in California’s Central Valley. Learn more at chriscra.github.io.

Michael Esbach is an interdisciplinary scientist dedicated to environmental sustainability and social justice, particularly in Amazonia and Melanesia. His professional and academic work focus on Indigenous peoples’ rights, natural resource management, and biocultural conservation. As a postdoctoral fellow with the High Meadows Environmental Institute, Michael is working with three Indigenous nations—the Cofán, Siekopai, and Siona—in the Ecuadorian Amazon to explore territorial management strategies and their impact on system resilience. This collaborative work between Indigenous, Ecuadorian, and U.S. researchers adopts interdisciplinary and applied approaches that include both Indigenous and Western sciences. In Melanesia, Michael continues to support community-based biocultural conservation activities that span specific species to entire islands and surrounding coral reefs.

I’m a conservation ecologist interested in ecological principles and applying them to conservation practices. My research interests cover a wide range of conservation-related topics including the stopover ecology of migratory birds and the conservation implications, species’ regional movement patterns and community structures in fragmented habitats, as well as impacts of China’s emerging ecotourism on conservation.

Prior to Princeton, I completed my BSc and MPhil degrees at the University of Hong Kong. For my MPhil, I studied interactive effects between climate and land-use change on species elevational range shifts, and behavioral thermal constraints on global ants’ distributions. I enjoy reading, hiking, photography, and Chinese calligraphy. I’m also a Spurs fan in case you want to talk about basketball :)

My research interests lie at the intersection of agricultural economics and conservation science. Specifically, I hope to apply methods from agricultural economics to answer questions related to biodiversity. Some of my previous work examined the causal impact of afforestation programs on income inequality among forest farm households in Taiwan. I have also examined the causal impact of COVID-19 on metro use in Taiwan. In the future, the research questions that I hope to answer include how conservation policies affect farmland and farm households. I am also interested in studying the impact of agricultural production on biodiversity.

I completed a M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics on a Fulbright Grant at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan. I also have a B.S. in Economics from the University of California, Davis.

I am a field ecologist with broad interests in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. My main research aims to understand how human-induced disturbances impact biodiversity. My PhD work looked at how urbanization affects stress responses and various levels of niche characteristics of passerine birds in subtropical environments in Southwest China. For my postdoc, I am working with Prof. David Wilcove to try to understand the effects of hunting or trapping on populations of birds, especially those birds migrate along the East Asian- Australasia Flyway.

Prior to Princeton, I received my PhD degree in Zoology from Sun Yat-sen University (2018), and received my master degree in Zoology (2015) and my bachelor degree in Wildlife and Nature Reserve Management (2012) from Southwest Forestry University in China. Read more about my research on my website: https://dan-liang.weebly.com/

Broadly speaking, I am interested in the areas of overlap between conservation ecology, behavioral economics, and public policy. Using insights from the behavioral sciences, I want to conduct research on the manifold ways science (and policy) can provide simple yet effective solutions to problems in ecology, biology, and the environment. From fishermen to college freshmen to you and me, we all stand to gain from our planet's well-being and suffer in its deterioration. As such, my research will hopefully tackle the alignment issue of how we can make the right thing to do the easy thing to do in our lives.

I obtained an undergraduate degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton in 2016, where I conducted research assessing the relative roles of fish assemblages and sea urchins (Diadema antillarum) on Caribbean coral reef health for my Senior Thesis. In the time following, I spent a year on a Princeton in Asia fellowship teaching at a boarding school in Thailand, a year conducting behavioral research on gelada monkeys (Theropithecus gelada) in the highlands of Ethiopia, and several months surveying coral reefs in Dominica and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in western North America. In my spare time, you can find me scuba diving, snowboarding, hiking, taking pictures of wildlife, or playing pretty much any sport.

My research interests lie in the field of avian ecology and conservation, especially that of shorebirds migrating along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Combining field study, individual tracking and mathematical modeling, I plan to identify the factors affecting their selections of migration routes and stopover sites, and to see whether the understanding of shorebirds migration patterns can be extended to that of other migratory birds.

Prior to joining the Drongos, I received my B.S. from Peking University in 2014, and during my time there, I became an avid birdwatcher and also became aware of the conservation issues pertaining to birds and other organisms.

My interdisciplinary research program draws on my training in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology and the human dimensions of conservation. I hold a PhD from the University of Florida, an MA from Columbia University, and a BA from Princeton University. My work aims to advance theory and practice under three broad themes: human-wildlife interactions, dynamics of social-ecological systems, and conservation science. I have worked on issues of endangered species conservation, hunting and wildlife trade, natural resource management, biocultural conservation, environmental sustainability, and ethnoecology in the U.S., Southeast Asia, and Latin America. As a postdoctoral fellow, my research integrates approaches in ecology and the human dimensions of conservation to understand issues of wildlife utilization, consumption, and trade in the urbanizing Amazon. I work closely with colleagues in the High Meadows Environmental Institute, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the Department of Anthropology, and the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment to develop creative solutions towards the conservation of biological and cultural diversity in a rapidly changing, interconnected, and urbanizing world. 

I am a PhD student advised by David Wilcove in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) program at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. My work focuses on the intersection of land use, climate impacts, and conservation ecology, with a particular focus on plant communities. I’m interested in understanding the interaction between climate change, development pressures, and conservation outcomes, and how policy implementation impacts the effectiveness of conservation mechanisms at different scales under climate change.

I graduated from the University of Chicago with bachelors in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies in 2018 and spent a year doing ecological field research focused on the impact of climate change on plant community phenology in central Florida scrub ecosystems. Prior to coming to Princeton, I spent three years working in local government in California, developing more data-driven, comprehensive approaches to flood resilience and endangered species management for a community in the Bay Area. I also worked as a Carbon Farm Planner for the Alameda County Resource Conservation District, helping local ranches and vineyards integrate carbon sequestration practices into their farming.

I am a biologist interested in global changes in biodiversity. I study how biodiversity loss is tied to global development across scales, from mechanisms of gradual species loss under local reductions in habitat area to patterns of biodiversity loss associated with trade globalization.

My research is split between field ecology and modeling and involves experimental systems in bird communities in the Brazilian Amazon. Before joining the Drongos, I graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Biology.