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Names in the News
Whitesell joins UCCE as human wildlife conflict advisor
Carolyn Whitesell joined UC Cooperative Extension as an assistant human-wildlife interactions advisor for San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and Sonoma counties on Feb. 18, 2020.
Whitesell, who grew up in the Bay Area and then lived for years in rural farming communities in southern Africa, brings extensive field experience along with an understanding of conflict from a variety of perspectives. For her dissertation research, she led a project studying human-carnivore conflict in a cattle ranching region in Botswana. She has worked on various other ecology research projects, including running a wildlife survey in Angola, and was an ecology research assistant at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. There, as part of her work, she bred livestock guarding dogs that were placed with local farmers to protect their livestock from carnivores.
She plans to immediately target current wildlife conflict issues in the Bay Area. To foster knowledge and tolerance for local wildlife, she plans to implement educational programs aimed at various audiences, from school kids to adults.
Whitesell earned a Ph.D. and an M.S. in ecology at UC Davis and B.S. in ecology, behavior and evolution at UC San Diego.
Whitesell is headquartered at the UCCE San Mateo County office in Half Moon Bay and can be reached at cawhitesell@ucanr.edu.
Nayak joins 4-H as evaluation coordinator
Roshan Nayak joined UC ANR 4-H Youth Development Program as an evaluation coordinator on Feb. 18, 2020.
Prior to his current position, Nayak was a BUILD program evaluator at Xavier University of Louisiana. From 2017 to 2018, he was an extension produce safety specialist at Colorado State University Extension.
Nayak's strengths include integrating evaluation theories into evaluation design, instrument development and validation, data analysis, and reporting to relevant stakeholders. As a member of the Penn State Extension Food Safety team, he evaluated the effectiveness of statewide on-farm food safety programs and identified deficiencies and barriers in the adoption of food safety standards on produce farms for his doctoral thesis.
Nayak earned a Ph.D. in agricultural and extension education at Pennsylvania State University, a masters in agricultural and consumer resources at Tarleton State University in Texas, and a B.S. in agriculture at Banaras Hindu University in India.
Nayak is based at the ANR building in Davis and can be reached at rknayak@ucanr.edu.
Eltarabily joins UC ANR for alfalfa irrigation management
Mohamed Eltarabily joined UC ANR as an assistant project scientist for alfalfa irrigation management on Feb. 3, 2020.
Prior to joining UC ANR, he was a Fulbright postdoctoral visiting scholar working with UC Cooperative Extension specialist Dan Putnam on a salinity management research project in alfalfa at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center.. At Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, he worked with UC Cooperative Extension specialist Khaled Bali on an alfalfa groundwater recharge project. He has also been involved in sunflower, olive and alfalfa projects at the UC Desert Research and Extension Center.
Before coming to California, he was an assistant professor of water resources engineering in the civil engineering department of Port Said University in Egypt.
Eltarabily earned a Ph.D. in environmental engineering at Egypt–Japan University of Science and Technology in Alexandria, Egypt. He earned an M.S. in civil engineering at Port Said University in Egypt and a B.S. in civil engineering at Suez Canal University in Port Said, Egypt.
Eltarabily is based at Kearney and can be reached at meltarab@ucanr.edu and (559) 646-6539.
SRM honors Huntsinger with research award
Lynn Huntsinger, professor and Russell Rustici Chair in Rangeland Management at UC Berkeley, received the W.R. Chapline Research Award at the Society for Range Management's (SRM) 72nd Annual Meeting, Technical Training and Trade Show in Denver, Colo., Feb. 16-20, 2020.
The Chapline Research Award gives special recognition to members of the society for exceptional and sustained research accomplishments in rangeland science and associated disciplines, including the biology and ecology of plants, wildlife and domestic livestock and characteristics of the ecosystems they inhabit.
She is the first woman to receive the award, according to Mel George, UCCE specialist emeritus.
Huntsinger has made exceptional contributions to rangeland science and management through her path-breaking research on rangeland social-ecological systems, her international engagement, public communication and innovative teaching, according to Maria Fernandez-Gimenez, professor of rangeland ecology and management at Colorado State University, who nominated Huntsinger for the award.
Huntsinger pioneered the field of human dimensions of rangeland management and focused the attention of rangeland science on rangelands as integrated social-ecological systems. By the 1990s, it was clear that ecological science and technical solutions alone would not solve fundamental rangeland management challenges. Rangeland science is needed to address social and cultural values, landowner behavior, public policies and communal institutions.
Huntsinger's early work on private rangeland landowners' and public land managers' attitudes, values and management behavior was the first rangeland social science in North America to focus on social and cultural aspects of range management. Another of her papers laid the foundation for studying rangelands as linked social and ecological systems. Further work identified the interdependent fates of public and private rangelands and theorized a potential threshold in ranchers' perceptions of ranch viability in the face of urbanization, beyond which ranch sale and land conversion become inevitable.
The term “working landscape,” now widely used to express the understanding that landscapes used for grazing produce multiple benefits for people and nature, was co-introduced by Huntsinger. Her recent research advances the concept of social-ecological ecosystem services in rangelands and demonstrates how cultural landscapes and their benefits are produced and maintained by the interaction of natural processes and human management.
Huntsinger's international collaborations in China and Spain have produced influential articles, a special issue of SRM's scientific journal Rangeland Ecology and Management on Integrated Social-ecological Approaches to Sylvopastoralism, and a book on Mediterranean Oak Woodland Working Landscapes. Her mentorship of young international scholars has helped launch multiple careers, and through them, the trajectory of rangeland social-ecological research globally. She led the USDA International Delegation on Rangeland Ecology and Management to China and has addressed the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Spain, Italy and Argentina, among other examples.
To translate science into management and policy, she helped lead the public engagement process for the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Plan, and has served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee to Review the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program, the BLM and Minerals Management Science Advisory Board, the NW Great Basin Resource Advisory Council (BLM), the Malpai Borderlands Group Science Advisory Board, and the Central Coast Rangelands Advisory Board.
