paul_gibsons

Paul is a professional biologist, living and working mostly on the Sunshine Coast, BC these days. He has a wide range of interests in all things nature, but predominantly those things "you can see" and writes mostly about his local wildlife, vegetation, fish, insects and other things he finds fascinating, including people and wildlife interactions.

His general passion is to translate scientific data, which we, biologists, are so good at collecting, to non-experts, including lower level decision makers, which we, biologists, are so poor at communicating effectively with.

His writing therefore is mostly in the classical nature-diary format, light-hearted, trying to tell a little bit of a story of an event or observation but always combining this with some essential, interesting or unusual information on the particular animal or plant he is writing about.

and just in case you have any doubts about the power of story vs "undisputable  (scientific?) facts", think back to the presidential debates of Bush vs Gore. After Gore reeled off some, (presumably unassailable) facts and statistics, George W. replied: "this is a man who has great numbers. I am beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, he invented the calculator! It's fuzzy math". Maybe Gore was right, but Bush won the presidency. We'd better concentrate on how we tell the story.....

Update:

having finally come to my senses, taking the consequences of what I have said for years, that conservation or wildlife management has nothing to do with animals or plants, but everything to do with people and being totally disillusioned with the natural sciences and their ideas of education, i have at last taken a giant step forwards and decided to embark on studying sociology. It may not provide the answer to life, the universe and everything (which is 42 anyway) but it is a step. Wish me luck and perseverance!