Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction

Award-winning writer and environmental thought leader Mary Ellen Hannibal wades into tide pools, follows hawks, and scours mountains to collect data on threatened species. She discovers the power of a heroic cast of volunteers-and the makings of what may be our last, best hope in slowing an unprecedented mass extinction.

Digging deeply, Hannibal traces today’s tech-enabled citizen science movement to its roots: the centuries-long tradition of amateur observation by writers and naturalists. Prompted by her novelist father’s sudden death, she also examines her own past-and discovers a family legacy of looking closely at the world. With unbending zeal for protecting the planet, she then turns her gaze to the wealth of species left to fight for.

Combining original reporting, meticulous research, and memoir in impassioned prose, Citizen Scientist is a literary event, a blueprint for action, and the story of how one woman rescued herself from an odyssey of loss-with a new kind of science.

Join Mary Ellen Hannibal for a presentation on Citizen Scientist followed by a discussion with:
Jon Christensen, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
Lila Higgins, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
H. Bradley Shaffer, UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science