Kaggie Orrick is a conservation science with a MA in Conservation Biology and a PhD from the Yale School of the Environment. Her work examines the human-wildlife interface in social-ecological landscapes. She bridges ecological and social science theories in the hopes to advance our ability to do conservation science. She am particularly interested in the interacting practices of people, animals, and domestic species.
Kaggie is an alum of the Fall 2008 Round River Namibia program. After graduating from Colby College in 2010, she worked on a small game reserve in South Africa conducting large carnivore research. She returned to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree at Columbia University, after which she served as the Round River Botswana Program leader from 2015-2018. This experience not only solidified her commitment to the field but also prompted her to question academic approaches to applied conservation.
Motivated to better represent diverse voices in conservation, Kaggie pursued a PhD at the Yale School of the Environment in collaboration with both ecologists and anthropologists. Throughout her doctoral studies, she maintained a partnership with Round River, drawing inspiration from her experiences as a Program Leader while executing her doctoral research in the Makgadikgadi region of Botswana. She was supported and guided by Cosmos Rathipana and Dix Kedilkwe. Her dissertation integrated participatory mapping, camera trapping, and semi-structured interviews—methodologies she initially encountered during her time as a student in Namibia. Kaggie successfully defended her dissertation in March of 2024 and began a two-year post-doctoral fellowship with UC Berkeley in June of that year, assisting with the wolf recovery project in partnership with the California Fish and Wildlife.
