When we started this site a few months ago we had the primary objective of sharing what was happening in our field work, starting with Michael in Kerala and myself in Nicaragua.  Writing from Morgan’s Rock, or from Kerala, may have made the posts feel focused on only two locations.  Others have joined in along the way, thankfully, so it is a much broader spectrum geographically and otherwise.  Some of us are back on campus now, and our task remains the same: getting important ideas and examples related to entrepreneurial conservation, and community-based problem solving, out there in a creative forum.

I have decided to bring my work–at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology and at Cornell Outdoor Education–as well as some of my “book learning” onto the page here.  The main reason for doing the latter is to show that, to put it bluntly, we are not making this stuff up.  Even on our most innovative days in the field, someone has thought about it or done it before, somewhere, sometime.  And that is good news.  So today I thought I would share a bit on the interplay between our basic tendencies and our better selves. Continue reading →