Dylan McDowell will spend six months studying wildlife management in Africa. (Photo courtesy of Dylan McDowell)

In the place where Dylan McDowell grew up, wildlife meant sea lions, sandpipers, salmon and passing pods of spouting whales. Where he’s going this summer, wildlife means something else entirely, something reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, exotic and fearsome: wildebeests, jackals, baboons, leopards, warthogs. And rhinos that have been poached nearly to extinction.

These are the beasts McDowell will encounter when he travels to Africa for six months of study and research, first with Nyati Conservation Corps in Zimbabwe and then with SIT Study Abroad in Tanzania.

But wild animals aren’t his sole interest. Humans captivate him, too. “I feel it’s my responsibility as a person to explore and embrace different cultures,” says McDowell, who’s working on two degrees at Oregon State University, one in K-12 education and the other in fisheries and wildlife.

Giraffes at the Cawston Block in Zimbabwe (Photo: Dylan McDowell)

In McDowell’s coastal hometown of Yachats, skin-color variations had more to do with degrees of sunburn than with ethnic or racial diversity. “There was only one African-American student in my high school,” McDowell says, sounding a little regretful. He wants to fill that cultural gap in his education. So he’s heading to Africa not only to study wildlife conservation but also to meet African people and learn firsthand about their values, their politics, their struggles, their aspirations.

“I like looking at things through different lenses,” McDowell explains. Which might explain why he gravitates toward the junctures of disparate fields — for instance, the nexus of science and public policy, his current passion. The program in Tanzania fits that passion to a T. “The program focuses on wildlife conservation and political ecology — basically, how people interact with the environment,” he says.

So although his research is on rhinos, it’s as much about the humans who kill and sell the endangered ungulates for their horns, believed to be an aphrodisiac in some Asian societies. It’s also about the people who protect the massive horned animals, which are being reintroduced to the Serengeti where they have been wiped out.

“Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world,” says McDowell. “There’s a lot of money in the rhino trade.” Noting that Africa is “still trying to recover from European hegemony” of earlier decades, he argues that to take an American perspective on the rhino issue is to miss the social, political and cultural context in which the poaching occurs.

Endangered rhinos must co-exist with people in some of the world's poorest countries. (Photo: Engineers Without Borders, Oregon State University)

Besides interviewing rangers and local residents about the rhinos, McDowell will live with members of the Maasai tribe, camp out during a four-week safari and take classes in Swahili.

McDowell may not have had many cross-cultural experiences growing up in Yachats, but he did get plenty of cross-species interactions at the Oregon Coast Aquarium as a volunteer and later as a part-time guide and an aquarist. He became acquainted with puffins and octopi, whiskered otters lolling in their artificial habitat and ethereal jellyfish pulsing in their tubular tank. He even kissed a sea lion named Leah. “Very fishy,” is how he describes the marine-mammal’s smooch, for which tourists happily paid extra as part of a behind-the-scenes tour.

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Follow McDowell’s travels through his blog, Under the Baobab Tree.

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) at 541-737-3006.

Fistula survivors gathered with Bonnie Ruder at Terrewode shortly before her departure from Soroti in March. (Photo courtesy of Bonnie Ruder)

Bonnie Ruder, a midwife in Eugene and an Oregon State master’s student in public health and anthropology, had gone to Uganda to learn about a traumatic condition known as obstetric fistula. It arises when labor is prolonged and the constant pressure of the baby on the birth canal causes tissue to die and a hole to open between it and the colon or urethra. Globally, about 2 to 3 million women suffer with the condition and the heartbreaking social isolation it causes. In Uganda alone, about 140,000 women live their days unable to control persistent leakage of urine or fecal matter, and about 1,900 new cases arise there annually. (See Birth Knowledge, an October, 2011, Terra story about Ruder’s research.)

During her time in Uganda, Ruder worked in a regional hospital in the town of Soroti. She interviewed 17 fistula survivors in their homes and in the offices of Terrewode, a nearby women’s health organization. She wanted to know what they had experienced and how they understood the causes of fistula. This summer, she is analyzing the information for her master’s thesis in OSU’s Reproductive Health Lab, but her eventual goal is to assist Terrewode in educating and treating women and reducing the number of new cases.

“It was eye opening,” she says. “I heard their stories about trying to get to a hospital (to give birth), and once they got to the hospital, being ignored for days. They said that the doctors checked on them and just kept saying it wasn’t time. When it finally became ‘time,’ the baby could be dead, and they would rush the women into surgery. The women would be told their baby was dead, that there was nothing the doctor could do, and they would be sent home.”

It was common, Ruder adds, for a woman to be told nothing about what it meant to live with a fistula or how it could be treated. “Sometimes the health-care people would say ‘come back,’ but if she is really poor, how is she supposed to come back? In the meantime, her husband would leave her, and she would be pushed further into poverty to the point where she won’t be able to come back.”

Meanwhile, a potential source of help has been outlawed by the government, she adds. The majority of rural women still give birth at home with the help of a family member or traditional birth attendant. About 60 percent of Uganda’s births occur in this fashion, but in 2010, the government made birth attendants illegal. “They’re really trying to import the Western way of birth without the resources to do it. It doesn’t feel locally appropriate,” she says.

Policy Not Enforced

Fortunately for women who still rely on birth attendants, it’s a cosmetic policy, adds Ruder. Enforcement is nonexistent. Still, what little support birth attendants had received from non-profit organizations has declined, and women have a harder time getting access to attendants’ services.

At the same time, the hospital birthing system is badly overworked. So-called free beds are available, but to use them, patients must bring all their own food and supplies and have a relative or friend bring them any drugs they might need. To get timely help from a doctor or a midwife requires a “tip,” which is usually out of reach of the very poor.

While she was in Soroti, Ruder worked with Terrewode to identify women with fistulas and to get them treated. “If fistula victims can get to town, Terrewode will take them to the hospital and give them all the supplies they need and check on them daily. They’ll tip the doctor to move them up higher on the list of people in line for surgery. And when the surgery is done and women are ready to go home, they also give them bus fare,” says Ruder.

Although she returned to Oregon in March, Ruder continues to assist Terrewode by writing grant proposals. The group is educating a network of women who can promote sound birthing skills and identify fistula sufferers in need of help.

Oregon State’s relationship with Terrewode continued through the efforts of another master’s student in public health, Lauren Baur from Pennsylvania. In July, Baur followed in Ruder’s footsteps and went to Soroti to assist Terrewode. See a video about Baur’s experience below.

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For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Zachary Dunn, a student in ecological engineering, coordinated a trip by OSU students to Kenya. (Photo: Lee Sherman)

How far would you go to help someone get a glass of clean water? Zachary Dunn knows exactly how far he’d go: 9,000 miles. And that’s just one trip, one way. By summer’s end, Dunn and fellow Oregon State University students had traveled almost 36,000 miles — greater than the Earth’s circumference — to help bring drinkable water to Lela, a tiny farming community in Kenya.

So why would engineering students fly halfway around the planet from bucolic Oregon to struggling East Africa, not once but twice? Why would Dunn say that contracting malaria on his first trip was a “small price to pay”? Why would he shrug off a State Department travel warning about terrorism and piracy in the region?

“In Lela, women and children walk up to three miles a day carrying 40-pound buckets of water,” explains Dunn, who grew up in Albany, Oregon. “I’ve seen kids as young as five with buckets on their heads. It’s a feat. They don’t complain. But the loss to productivity and education is huge.”

It’s not despite the chasm between the Kenyan village (where waterborne disease is common) and his Oregon hometown (where pure water flows from faucets and fountains at the twist of a wrist) but because of it that Dunn joined the OSU project in 2010 to survey water sources, test water quality and commission a groundwater survey. He and a student team headed back to Lela in July to help spearhead drilling a well and installing a rainwater catchment system.

“We all have a common fate,” says Dunn. “These kinds of projects can help shape the future of the world. It benefits all of us. It’s a win-win.”

During the dry season, women and children in Lela walk about three miles to get clean drinking water in a nearby town. (Photo: EWB-USA, Oregon State University)

That all-embracing, planetary vision is what led to Dunn’s participation in OSU’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA), which is dedicated to the vision of a world in which all communities have the capacity to meet their basic human needs. And it’s that vision that steered him to the Ecological Engineering program for his undergraduate work. The program, he says, is based on “systems theory,” the notion that everything is connected and, thus, solutions must be holistic.

“I’m interested in redefining the relationship between humans and the planet,” says Dunn, who describes himself as a “born tinkerer,” always tilting toward problem solving even in childhood.

The Lela Women’s Water Committee linked up with EWB-USA when they were looking for a partner on their quest for a better life. “We only partner with communities that have identified a need and have asked for help,” says Dunn, who will start graduate studies in public policy this fall.

The other EWB-USA requirement: The project must be sustainable. “A huge number of wells in Africa are in disrepair,” Dunn notes. “Many communities do not have the capacity to maintain them.”

That’s why EWB-OSU’s team of six (five students and one professional mentor) recommended a hand pump for Lela’s new well. Other power-source options, such as diesel or solar, cost too much to maintain or are targets for theft. With guidance from faculty and a groundwater expert from engineering firm CH2M Hill, the students have researched everything from the compressive strength of concrete (for the foundations under rainwater storage tanks) to the reliability and availability of pumps.

Zach Dunn celebrated with members of the women's water committee in Lela, Kenya, after completing a water project for the community. (Photo: Justin Smith)

In Kenya, Dunn and his team stay in a “simba,” a house made of wood and mud with a corrugated metal roof, on the land owned by village elder Charles Olang’o. The elder’s son Paul is the translator for the Oregon State engineers. A fast friendship has formed among the Kenyans and the students.

“We have a really special bond with Lela,” Dunn says. “Charles calls me his son; Paul calls me his brother. They are very gracious people.”

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Read updates and see photos of the Oregon State students’ work in Kenya.

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Millions depend on crops such as maize and rice, but production could fall in a warmer world. Oregon State University economist John Antle and an international network of colleagues are looking at the options for farmers in Africa, South Asia and North America.

In the Vihiga district of western Kenya, farms average little more than an acre. Corn is the dominant crop and source of sustenance, but most households run short six to 10 months of the year. They supplement with beans, groundnuts, bananas and vegetables and make money by selling milk, if they are lucky enough to own a cow. Throughout the country, corn production is declining, and researchers are urgently searching for drought-tolerant varieties to meet the needs of a growing population. For people already on the edge, adapting to climate change is a life-and-death matter.

In fact, scientists say, projections of a warmer, drier climate in East Africa could cut food production as it is currently practiced on 82 percent of the farms in Vihiga. This rural area doesn’t have far to fall. More than half of its farm households already earn less than $1 per person per day.

John Antle sees a better future for the people of Vihiga. By shifting from corn to more drought-tolerant crops such as sweet potatoes, farmers could offset much if not all of the negative impacts of climate change. Moreover, since sweet potatoes are high in vitamin A and the vines make good livestock fodder, they could improve nutrition for their families, feed their cattle and maintain milk production.

For the Oregon State University professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AREc), Vihiga demonstrates the need for climate-change adaptation policies. “Until now, adaptation has been politically incorrect in the climate world,” he says. “We see more and more evidence that real changes are happening, and we had better start thinking more about adapting.”

With a grant from the German international development agency GTZ, Antle and a research team from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and international research centers are evaluating the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the potential benefits of alternative cropping systems in East Africa. The simulation models that Antle and collaborators have developed over the past two decades are now being used by researchers globally to assess impacts of climate and other environmental changes in agriculture.

In the Great Plains and Midwest, he and co-author Susan Capalbo, head of AREc, have used these tools to study the potential for cropland to store carbon under conservation and reduced tillage systems. They are partnering with colleagues at OSU, Washington State, the University of Idaho and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to evaluate wheat in the Pacific Northwest under a changing climate (see “Against the Grain“).

Global Food Supplies

“For about a 150 years, the real price of wheat has gone down,” Antle says, even as global population has risen. “So why is that? Because supply has gone up faster than demand. That is the Green Revolution story, the scientific revolution that began after World War II and allowed agriculture to expand production. So the big question is, Are we now at a turning point where that’s no longer going to be true?”

Two factors — increasing demand from larger, more affluent populations; flattening growth in food supplies, as the Green Revolution bumps into production limits — are contributing to higher food prices. In the short term, he adds, there is still plenty of arable land available, and farmers can shift crops from fiber and fuel to food. But rising incomes in developing countries are already adding to demand and are likely to continue to do so well into the future.

He points to China, which, despite increasing incomes for a portion of its people, still has massive poverty. “People think that China is now this rich country. That’s wrong. There’s a small proportion of people in China who are well-off now, but if you get away from the coast, there are still a billion really, really poor people. That’s true for India and sub-Saharan Africa too.”

Those countries will continue to transition to a higher standard of living, he says. “For a long time, people have said, when the rest of the world tries to have a lifestyle like ours, we’ll be in trouble. Well, that’s what’s happening.”

On top of that, climate change poses an additional threat. Somalia and other parts of East Africa are already in their 16th year of drought. In Kenya, which hosts refugees fleeing violence and famine in Somalia, crop failures are common, and the country has to import corn to meet growing demand.

In their research, Antle and his colleagues combined available data on farm production in two Kenyan districts — Vihiga and Machakos — with the results of two climate models to estimate how new sweet potato varieties, milk, livestock and drought-tolerant corn might maintain food production and farm incomes in the future. Most previous studies of climate adaptation apply to large regions, such as whole countries. Their study was one of the first to compare the potential consequences of several climate change adaptation strategies for agriculture with this much detail.

“We’re trying to understand these systems, what characteristics make them work better or worse and what kinds of crop-breeding activities would work with changes in climate,” says Antle.

For Epps and his research team, these elephants were a rare sighting on the border of the Idodi-Pawaka Wildlife Management Area and Ruaha National Park. (Photo courtesy of Clinton Epps)

The focus of their two-year study was animal migration patterns in a country that is larger than Texas and Oklahoma combined and whose rising human population has forced wildlife into a diminishing network of reserves. With no fences, the elephants, giraffes, antelope, lions and other species ignore human boundaries as they travel from one reserve to another. As farm fields encroach on habitat and roads create barriers to travel corridors, wildlife struggles to maintain a foothold.

Epps was focusing on patterns of elephant movement between reserves. Despite all the time spent in the field, he and his team saw the seven-ton animals outside these designated areas only once. But the evidence they did find — dung, tracks in the dirt — would prove to help them and other researchers understand where elephants are traveling and whether or not the human competition for space is fragmenting the elephant population.

“I was interested in connectivity and movement between reserves as a general research topic, and this was a landscape where that work was needed,” says Epps. He and Gwin now work at Oregon State University where Epps is an assistant professor in Fisheries and Wildlife and Gwin is a research associate in Agricultural and Research Economics.

Elephant Connections

As a Ph.D. student at U.C. Berkeley, Epps had studied bighorn sheep movements in California’s Mojave Desert. In Africa, he could apply his knowledge to a new system. His goal is to better understand animal migration pathways with the hope of guarding them from human encroachment. Today, he and Rachel Crowhurst, an OSU graduate student, are doing this by analyzing animal tracks and DNA from fecal matter.

Clinton Epps, right, OSU professor of fisheries and wildlife, works with Alphonce Msigwa to collect dung samples for DNA analysis. (Photo courtesy of Clinton Epps)

Drawing on his knowledge of bighorn sheep, Epps analyzed elephant tracking data to map out specific corridors of movement. Although elephants are elusive during the day, the scientists’ analysis shows that the animals still appear to be traveling somewhat freely between the reserves. While some environmental factors such as steep slopes influence elephant travel choices, human activity appears to be the most significant constraint.

“Elephants are a good indicator species,” he says. “Species that are the best predictors at this scale are generalists and most sensitive to human activity.”

Based on the data received from the elephant study, scientists now have a better understanding of the distribution of many major mammal species in central Tanzania.

A History of Humanity

“These are places where there have been people, we think, as long as people have been around,” Epps says. But in recent times, the number of inhabitants has grown exponentially, increasing strain on an already tense relationship between humans and nature. In 1955, there were nine million people in Tanzania. By 2008, the population had skyrocketed to 42.5 million, with agriculture overtaking the grasslands.

In the mid 1900s, humans were forced out of the areas currently designated as reserves. Epps says that during his studies, he regularly comes across human artifacts. “I think this is something conservationists tend to oversimplify. These reserves have not always been free of human occupation,” Epps says. “What has changed, I think, is the sheer density of the human population and the intensity of that footprint.”

From Tent to Lab Bench

As he was completing his field data collection in Tanzania, Epps was hired at OSU. With financial support from the university and from the National Science Foundation, he has begun analyzing DNA from fecal matter to determine the specific corridors of elephant movement.

By combining elephant tracks with the information gathered from DNA samples, Epps has been contrasting long-term and modern-day elephant movement patterns in the presence of human constraints. In addition, the information from the DNA is giving valuable insight into the diversity, or lack thereof, among the elephant gene pools.

“There’s not much genetic structure on the scale of Tanzania, which tells you that there have been elephants moving all over the place (through corridors),” Epps says. Limited genetic structure implies that distinct populations didn’t exist within areas now established as reserves, suggesting the animals historically have been interbreeding throughout the country.

Giraffes and Antelope

In 2011, Crowhurst spent five months of intensive studies on other large mammal movement in Tanzania, including giraffes and two species of antelope. Together, their data will help give a better picture of animal connectivity in Tanzania and raise the possibility of preserving corridors and reducing conflicts between humans and wildlife.

In Ruaha National Park, Clinton Epps collected dung samples from a herd of grazing elands. (Photo courtesy of Clinton Epps)

“By comparing connectivity patterns across a range of species, we can implement management schemes that will have a higher probability of maintaining or enhancing connectivity for most wildlife species,” Crowhurst says.

While the results are helping identify areas at risk, time is running out in some locations. For example, Epps and collaborating scientists were able to identify a highway crossing that provides elephants with critical access between reserves, connectivity they need to associate with other elephant populations. “It’s possible that this spot is the remaining link between gene flow for this whole area,” Epps says.

Now that this possible bottleneck has been identified, Epps and Crowhurst hope that accommodations can be made to sustain these wildlife movements. Since most land is privately owned, the government will need to work with landowners to achieve a balance between wildlife and people. For elephants, a species that is slowly recovering from the ivory trade and is battling human expansion, the effects of this barrier are unpredictable.

Back in a lab at OSU, Epps and Crowhurst continue to examine data from their samples and their tracking records. Together they are slowly mapping the diverse Tanzania landscape and helping ensure that despite human expansion, some of it will remain wild.

At Oregon State University, Ruder is pursuing master’s degrees in medical anthropology and in international public health. In Uganda she will combine these disciplines by studying cultural attitudes toward obstetric fistulas, a medical condition that affects 2 to 3 million women worldwide, mostly in developing countries. Fistulas result in incontinence and social isolation for women if left untreated.

“The roots of the problem are complex,” says Ruder. “Training traditional birth attendants would help. But there are deep cultural traditions at work.”

Fistulas can occur when any unnatural passageway opens up between two organs in the body. During childbirth, especially with girls whose bodies have not fully developed, prolonged pressure by the baby can damage the lining of the birth canal, leading to an opening between the vagina and the urinary tract or the rectum.

In collaboration with Terrewode, a nonprofit organization in Uganda, Ruder will interview birth attendants and fistula sufferers about their understanding of causes and preventive measures. As a member of OSU’s Reproductive Health Laboratory, her ultimate goal is to improve maternal health care for women in developing countries as well as the United States.

Ruder will work in the eastern Ugandan city of Soroti until the end of March, 2012, but it won’t be her first trip to Africa. In 1995, after receiving a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Arizona, she volunteered with a nonprofit group in Zimbabwe, the Kunzwana Woman’s Association, working with women on commercial farms and in mining communities. “Living conditions on the farms were terrible and tragic,” she says.

OSU master's student Bonnie Ruder, left, used her midwifery skills with Haitian women after the 2010 earthquake. (Photo courtesy of Bonnie Ruder)

That experience inspired her to move to Oregon and become educated in homebirth as a midwife. In June 2010, following the March earthquake in Haiti, Ruder volunteered for three weeks with Mother Health International in a birth center about two hours from the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“The Haitian women were amazing,” she says. “They were so happy and appreciative of the care.” Many would ride a motorbike from the mountainous countryside to the center to give birth. Because they often had other children at home, they would clutch the newborn in their arms a few hours later as they sped away for the jarring ride home. “It was not our ideal post-partum picture,” says Ruder.

On her way back to Oregon from Haiti, Ruder met Dr. Lewis Wall, a medical anthropologist and obstetrician at Washington University in St. Louis, who established the Worldwide Fistula Fund to serve women in developing countries. While at the university, Ruder also met Alice Emasu, a Ugandan woman and coordinator for Terrewode, an organization in Soroti whose aim is to empower women and support families.

With a $50,000 grant from the The Fistula Foundation, Emasu is addressing some of the cultural factors that lead to childbirth-related fistulas such as poor nutrition, lack of adequate medical care and child marriage. The organization will increase advocacy for treatment, prevention and social integration of fistula patients. Ruder’s ethnographic research will provide a better understanding of how Ugandan women and birth attendants view fistulas.

She explains that from a biomedical perspective, the condition is caused by “obstetrically obstructed labor,” but if local people don’t share that understanding, solutions to the problem may not be effective.

“I’ll ask women who have suffered from the fistula what they think caused it and what they think could prevent it. I’ll also ask those same questions of traditional birth attendants,” says Ruder. With Terrewode, she will evaluate her findings in light of existing approaches to preventing fistulas through education. In the long run, she adds, educating girls and empowering women may be the most effective public health option.

Ruder will travel to Soroti with her husband Eric and two children, Lucas, 8, and Soren, 11. Terrewode is not supporting her work financially, so she is raising funds to help pay for expenses for travel, translation and other activities.

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Ruder interviewed 17 fistula survivors in Soroti and working in the regional hospital. See a June 2012 story about her experience.