The causes and consequences of global biodiversity loss and species extinctions are complex and rapidly changing across spatial and temporal scales. They have both local and global manifestations and are entangled with biological, socio-cultural, economic, and political processes. Many of these challenges demand novel approaches, including innovative research and interdisciplinary analysis. They need new skills and methods from various disciplines and expert communities, including the humanities, social sciences, and biophysical sciences. They also require rethinking who conducts research and communicates findings and how knowledge is produced at the intersection of research and higher education institutions and social change.
This book aims to respond to these challenges. Extinction Stories was co-authored by undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts (USA), while exploring issues of extinction, environmental conservation, and biodiversity loss. The following twenty chapters combine the final projects conducted by students in the Great Problem Seminar (GPS) Extinctions course during the Fall of 2020 and the Biodiversity course in the Spring of 2021. Both courses took place while the world was still facing the impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic—a global crisis that, as our current sixth mass extinction, is also profoundly rooted in long-lasting processes of habitat destruction and human-induced environmental change.
The Great Problem Seminar Program offers a two-term course that immerses first-year students into university-level research and introduces them to the project-based curriculum at WPI. It invites WPI faculty from different disciplines and areas of expertise to co-design and co-teach a class addressing critical contemporary problems. The GPS Extinctions‘ faculty included Marja Bakermans and William San Martín. Dr. Marja Bakermans is a wildlife field biologist with expertise in conservation biology, migratory bird species, and their anthropogenic disturbances in North and South America. Dr. Bakermans is affiliated with WPI’s Biology and Biotechnology Department and the Department of Integrative & Global Studies. Dr. William San Martín is a historian and a science & technology studies scholar with expertise in global environmental sciences and policy, socio-environmental justice, and sustainable development issues in Latin America and the Global South. Dr. San Martín is affiliated with WPI’s Humanities & Arts Department, and the International & Global Studies, the MS Community Climate Adaptation, and the Great Problems Seminar Programs.
WPI’s Biology and Biotechnology Department offers the Biodiversity class as an introductory course in its Conservation and Applied Ecology track. The class is also part of WPI’s Environmental & Sustainability Studies Program and it is designed and taught by Marja Bakermans for a variety of WPI students from first-year students to seniors interested in the science and the practice of environmental conservation from a problem-solving and applied research approach.
The following chapters combine these perspectives and highlight key insights of current students in their quest to create a better world. Students co-authoring this book strongly believe in creating an open-access text so that others may learn and build upon their work and knowledge. Throughout the text, students investigate critical challenges in biodiversity: Habitat Destruction, Overexploitation, Conservation and Management, Pollution, and Climate Change. They explore the complex roots and changing consequences of extinctions and the challenges to address the research and practice of human-nature interactions.
Extinction Stories reminds us that the answers to our current socio-environmental challenges are entangled on local and planetary trajectories and that our ability to understand and face them from various perspectives and scales will be essential for our shared future on Earth.
The editors and co-authors of this volume firmly believe that our current ecological crises require new ways of thinking about research, education, and their place in public debates and decision-making. We hope this volume contributes to expanding discussions about environmental change and biodiversity conservation across disciplines. We hope it can assist in uncovering new paths to reimagine the essential role of open-access resources and undergraduate research and education in the strategies we need to face our current and future challenges.
