Ryan Carle

Ryan Carle identifies a naturalist as simply being someone who observes, pays attention to, and appreciates the greater-than-human world around them. To a sense, everyone is already a naturalist—if you’ve ever appreciated a pelican flying by, or noticed that a flower is a beautiful color, there you go, you are practicing natural history. Cultivating that innate curiosity and appreciation for the world, you can learn to slow down, observe organisms, landscapes, and patterns really closely and deeply. Our society does not promote this sort of relationship to the greater-than-human world; in fact as a whole, we are taught to ignore the plants and animals around us and stifle our curiosity. Practicing natural history is realizing that the world all around us, anywhere we are, is endlessly fascinating and that life is so much richer if we notice, wonder, and appreciate, and make friends with our fellow organisms.

Ryan Carle currently is a teacher of Natural History at UC Santa Cruz where he teaches Natural History Field Quarter, Natural History of Birds and the Natural History of the UCSC Campus. When he is not teaching, he works on the conservation and research of seabirds in California and Chile with the non-profit Oikonos. Ryan especially enjoys being a naturalist in Santa Cruz because there is such a large diversity of landscapes and habitats. There are always new places to explore, he has lived here for 15 years and somehow, he still finds new places. Ryan identifies one difficulty for new naturalists is the idea that they don’t have the skill to become an expert in a taxonomic group, which is someone anyone can do given time. He recognizes this is even a larger barrier for those that come from underrepresented backgrounds.