As I am an environmental studies major, this internship focusing on biodiversity conservation was extremely relevant. One of the classes I took abroad, called Towards the Green Transition in Africa, focused heavily on biodiversity conservation and gave me a good basis for the internship. The paper that I wrote for that class was all about biodiversity conservation, and a lot of the things I learned from my internship connected to what I had written in that paper. Additionally, many of the environmental studies classes I have taken at UCSB have discussed biodiversity, with many professors explaining the importance of increasing and maintaining biodiversity to battle the climate crisis. The internship also focused on the impacts of environmental degradation on communities, and that can be addressed at the grassroots level.
As an environmental studies major, this internship was extremely relevant, allowing me to see how the biodiversity conservation and climate crisis theories I studied at UCSB apply to real-world challenges. I was able to connect my academic research on the green transition directly to my work, gaining a deeper understanding of how environmental degradation can be addressed through grassroots action.