by Matt Hughes
South Sudan has a grip on Professor DeeAnn Reeder’s imagination that even conflict and heartbreak can’t shatter.
While on a humanitarian trip in the early aughts, the biologist glimpsed the incredible diversity of bats filling the country’s night skies, and knew instantly she had to return as a scientist. A leading authority on bats and mammals, Reeder began studying South Sudan’s biodiversity in 2008, and has kept coming back even as civil war has torn the country apart.
“It’s one of those places that just grabs a little piece of your soul,” she says of the rich transitional landscape, where deep Congolese forests crash into the savanna. Animals from both regions inhabit this environment, some heretofore unknown to the outside world. Reeder identified one of them, the badger bat, in 2013, and believes her ongoing photo-based wildlife survey may yield more. Citizen-scientists can aid the effort by tagging animal photographs at zooniverse.org.
As South Sudan’s political and economic plight has worsened, Reeder’s work has increasingly incorporated conservation efforts, including training “community wildlife ambassadors” and addressing human nutritional challenges that lead to poaching.
by Matt Hughes
South Sudan has a grip on Professor DeeAnn Reeder’s imagination that even conflict and heartbreak can’t shatter.
While on a humanitarian trip in the early aughts, the biologist glimpsed the incredible diversity of bats filling the country’s night skies, and knew instantly she had to return as a scientist. A leading authority on bats and mammals, Reeder began studying South Sudan’s biodiversity in 2008, and has kept coming back even as civil war has torn the country apart.
“It’s one of those places that just grabs a little piece of your soul,” she says of the rich transitional landscape, where deep Congolese forests crash into the savanna. Animals from both regions inhabit this environment, some heretofore unknown to the outside world. Reeder identified one of them, the badger bat, in 2013, and believes her ongoing photo-based wildlife survey may yield more. Citizen-scientists can aid the effort by tagging animal photographs at zooniverse.org.
As South Sudan’s political and economic plight has worsened, Reeder’s work has increasingly incorporated conservation efforts, including training “community wildlife ambassadors” and addressing human nutritional challenges that lead to poaching.