Sarah Sawyer

Ph.D. Candidate

ssawyer@nature.berkeley.edu
Phone/Fax: 510-643-3918
Mailing address: 137 Mulford Hall #3114 University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3114

Research Interests

I am interested in the conservation of wildlife in human-modified landscapes, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa. I am particularly interested in exploring ways to better incorporate the environmental relationships of local human populations into conservation agendas. For my dissertation work, I hope to study landscape connectivity in Cross River gorilla habitat in Cameroon and Nigeria. I plan to examine the effects of human-landscape interactions on gorilla distribution and habitat selection. To expand traditional ideas of connectivity, I will explore the influence of habitat suitability, as well as local human activities, traditions, and attitudes, on landscape functional connectivity for the critically endangered Cross River gorilla.

As an undergraduate at Stanford University, I majored in Human Biology and studied Primatology and French language. I stayed at Stanford to pursue a master’s degree in Primatology in Francophone Africa. My master's thesis, entitled "The Interwoven Lives of Humans and Primates; how political and economic crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo have affected Bonobo Populations", explored the implications of human activities on other primate communities living in human-dominated landscapes.

Upon completing my master's degree, I spent 4 months working for a chimpanzee rehabilitation and re-release project in Conkouati National Park, Republic of Congo. With local research assistants, volunteers followed re-released chimpanzees daily, studying their behaviors, feeding habits, and habitat usage. The experience was invaluable. It helped me see that, in order to have any chance at success, conservation projects must properly address the relationships of local human populations' to the landscape and to the animals with which they share it.

After leaving Congo, I came to live and work in Bwindi National Park, in Uganda, as research assistant to Dr. Martha Robbins of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. Dr. Robbins studies the socio- and feeing ecology of the critically endangered mountain gorilla. I collected data on one habituated group of mountain gorillas, trained and worked closely with local assistants, participated in a park-wide census of the mountain gorilla population, and worked alongside the Institute for Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) in Ruhija, Uganda. The work of Dr. Robbins and ITFC helped me learn effective ways to combine research and conservation agendas. After two years in Uganda, I returned to the states to begin my dissertation work at UC Berkeley in hopes of positively influencing wildlife conservation in Africa.