Maggie Swift, Ph.D.
@ecomargo.bsky.social
savanna ecologist & wildlife conservationist currently postdoc-ing it up at Cornell 🐘🐘🐘 Studying elephant movements at the intersection of conservation ecology, veterinary fencing, and biological simulations. she/her/hers. www.maggie.earth 🌈 💜🖤🤍
The Trump administration’s proposed FY26 budget for NOAA would eliminate climate research at NOAA. 🧪 eos.org/research-and...
Proposed NOAA Budget Calls for $0 for Climate Research - Eos
In the latest move in a months-long attack on climate science funding, the Trump administration released a budget document on 30 June that calls for zero funding for climate research and the eliminati...
eos.org
It is difficult to describe just how disastrous it would be if just-released NOAA budget proposal (or even large portions) were to be enacted: It would involve a wholesale dismantling (decimation, really) of entities relevant to weather, climate, & ocean research & prediction.
wildlife.cornell.edu/blog/my-rhin... If we believe that the way things are now is how they have always been, we lose the ability to imagine a return to previous abundance. Rhinos are no exception -- read more of my thoughts on dehorning, poaching, and the future of rhino conservation in Kruger. 🦏🇿🇦
My Rhinoceros Teacher | Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health
5:30 AMAs dawn yawns and stretches over the African savanna, a line of cars waits impatiently at the wooden gate of Crocodile Bridge Rest Camp. I join the tail end in my tiny white rental car, exhaust...
wildlife.cornell.edu
"If we don’t invest in technologies like mRNA vaccines for pandemic influenza now, once a virus starts going human-to-human, it will simply be too late...The next pandemic could become the largest mass casualty event in American history." Proud to work with Steve! www.statnews.com/2025/06/30/m...
The U.S. must invest in mRNA vaccines against pandemic influenza viruses now
If we don’t invest in technologies like mRNA vaccines for pandemic influenza now, once a virus starts going human-to-human, it will simply be too late.
statnews.com
Cost estimate of the House-passed "Big Beautiful Bill" is out It'd be the largest cut to Medicaid+CHIP and SNAP in history while still increasing deficits by $2.4 trillion due to $3.8 trillion in tax cuts This'd be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in history
If anyone is interested in applying to this fellowship with me for fall 2026, please reach out! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons... possible projects are related to #coral population genetics or host-symbiont interactions #fellowships #ecology #evolution #phdsky 🧪🌎
Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution
The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...
simonsfoundation.org
I know a lot of folks are currently looking for jobs, so this is a timely new position w/@ucanr.bsky.social & UCSD! General role is environment-focused data science, but specific topical focus could be anything from sustainable ag to wildfire risk. More details: recruit.ucanr.edu/JP...
UC Cooperative Extension Specialist - Computational Data Science for Agriculture and Natural Resource Technologies Located at the University of California, San Diego (25-17)
University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources is hiring. Apply now!
recruit.ucanr.edu
Trump administration cuts to NSF will result in more than 200,000 FEWER people per year involved in basic science, training, and education - what should have been the next generation of US scientists. This isn't even eating your seed corn, it is setting your seed corn on fire and salting the earth.
Kudos to these scientists for sharing! I only just received an ADHD diagnosis, but looking back on my PhD, how could I not have known? I constantly procrastinated & then panic-finished analyses and writing in record time, all while fighting my brain to focus every single day. Exhausting.
Nature@nature.com · last yr.Researchers with ADHD discuss its peaks and valleys and how they structure their work lives to succeed https://go.nature.com/43qHtnH
"Making us less able to fight the biggest problem of the 21st century doesn't make anything more efficient and doesn't make anything great," Shiffman said. www.space.com/the-universe... 🌎🧪🦑🐠
'Their loss diminishes us all': Scientists emphasize how Trump's mass NOAA layoffs endanger the world
"From our perspective down in the trenches actually working for the government, it feels like the people up top just have no clue about anything."
space.com
We have been asked to circulate this for those interested. If you would like to show up to court in Syracuse on Tuesday to support Mr. Taal, please read below carefully and follow courtroom protocols.
daniel sieradski@self.agency · last yr.
Mahmoud Khalil ‘felt as though he was being kidnapped’, lawyers write in new filing
Mahmoud Khalil ‘felt as though he was being kidnapped’, lawyers write in new filing
Lawyers demand in updated lawsuit that Columbia University graduate student be released from custody Mahmoud Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped when he was handcuffed and shackled and rushed from New York to immigration detention in Louisiana…
theguardian.com
Oh this is beautiful and wondrous! A total lunar eclipse (seen from Earth) is a total solar eclipse seen from the moon. Here is the “diamond ring” of last night’s eclipse seen by Blue Ghost on the Moon! 🧪 www.flickr.com/photos/firef...
Excited to share our new study "Environmental health and societal wealth predict movement patterns of an urban carnivore"- out today in Ecology Letters! All about how social-ecological features influence coyote movement. (1/n) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11… [📸 Johanna Turner] 🧪🌎
Absolutely disgusting. Please call your congresspeople. Fivecalls.org. I’ve decided to call every morning about various issues. This will be the top of my list tomorrow.
fivecalls.org
Jim Acosta announces on air that he's leaving CNN and says, "it is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant ... don't give in to the lies."
New Job opening: Research scientist ecologist with the NY State Natural Heritage program. Responsible for various projects and tasks, the intriguing one to me is being the coordinator identifying old-growth forests: esf.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...
As if “the economy” is separate from the clear need, including the ECONOMIC need, to address the #ClimateCrisis. This “false choice” framing is the most moronic argument an awful politician could make, and shame on any of us for falling for it. The massive costs of INACTION are already inescapable.
POLITICO Europe@politico.eu · 2y agoGermany's likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to restore Germany’s industrial competitiveness by putting climate policies on the back burner. 🔗 www.politico.eu/article/germ...
AWESOME work by some incredible scientists. Papers like these that investigate how we think about and conduct our science are so important. Read, read, read it! Congrats to my grad school labmate Ren, @leafwarbler.bsky.social, and coauthors :)
Madhusudan 🦉 Katti@leafwarbler.myatproto.social · 2y ago1. Thrilled to share a new paper from my group out this week in Ecosphere where we critique the much researched “luxury effect” in urban ecology and offer a power-based socioecological framework to complicate our understanding of how wealth may or may not influence biodiversity. #oa 🧵:
"the closeness we have with a #language is not just a product of our ability to use it but of other emotional valences as well. If language is a form of identity, it is one that may be changed by circumstance or even by force of will." #bilingual #multilingualism www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/m...
Can You Lose Your Native Tongue?
After moving abroad, I found my English slowly eroding. It turns out our first languages aren’t as embedded as we think.
nytimes.com
Republicans are trying to take away and criminalize the right to make decisions around our own health, whether that’s the right to wear a mask or the right to have an abortion. Unacceptable.
NC Senate votes to ban people from wearing masks in public for health reasons
The North Carolina Senate plans to vote Wednesday to ban people from wearing masks in public for health reasons, institute harsher penalties on protesters, roll back juvenile justice reforms, raise to...
wral.com
Lakay -animated short by Amarise Defranco www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbzJ... #haiti #Ayiti #animation
LAKAY | Haitian Animated Short | CalArts 2024
When a girl travels to her home country in a dream, she's whisked along on a journey with a familiar stranger where she learns a little bit more about who sh...
youtube.com
I'm Maggie! I'm a savanna ecologist currently studying how African elephants move around the landscape and respond to fences and roads. I use computation to aid conservation goals. 🧪🌎🐘
Elephants Having A Mud Bath Viralhog GIF
ALT: Elephants Having A Mud Bath Viralhog GIF
media.tenor.com
TheGingerGeologist 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️☮️@gingergeologist.bsky.social · 2y agoI’m Ina. I study dead things which are generally not “fossilized” and hike around with a backpack full of rocks 🤷🏻♀️ 🧪⚒️🌎
Spring ephemeral roundup - 1 Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) - 2 Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) - 3 Yellow Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) - 4 White Trillium (Trillium Grandiflorum). Did you know that bloodroot seeds are ant-dispersed (myrmecochory)? I love their clasping leaves.
WOW I had never even considered the importance of headers in this way. Now we know!
Accessibility Awareness@a11yawareness.bsky.social · 2y agoWhen using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.
Accomplishing something big like a PhD doesn't often end like you planned. Many discovered this during the pandemic, and I discovered it after an ER visit screwed up my defense plans. idk who needs to hear this, but: It might not end how you envisioned, but you did the thing, and that's enough. :)
