Kaggie Orrick is a conservation scientist with a MA in Conservation Biology from Columbia University and a PhD from the Yale School of the Environment. She is also an alum of the Fall 2008 Round River Namibia program. Her work examines human-wildlife interactions in working landscapes. She bridges ecological and social science methodologies in the hopes to improve applied management and conservation efforts. Kaggie has worked on a number of conservation projects across the world, with a focus on human-predator conflict in North America and Southern Africa. She has also studied small mammal occurrence along a habitat and elevation gradient on a geographically-isolated mountain; feeding ecology and energetics of large carnivores, including cheetah; and community-based monitoring of herbivore communities. She is currently working at University of California, Berkeley’s California Wolf Project, assisting with the natural wolf recovery in the state in partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

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. Then, 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.