Cayte Bosler is an environmental journalist, a conservationist, and a student in Columbia’s Sustainability Management masters program.
Throughout her career she has done research in the Bolivian Amazon and Cuba; she has trekked to a remote ecosystem at 17,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes, and boated through the mangrove-filled estuaries of Guatemala — all to tell stories about people fighting to protect wilderness and habitat for other species.
Bosler publishes on a variety of subjects, including wilderness conservation and climate change research. Based on her journalistic investigations from around the world, her writing critiques the effects of human development, exploring links to ecological abuse. Her writings have appeared in Scientific American, Hemispheres Magazine, National Geographic, Fast Company, the Atlantic, VICE Impact, and more.
She is working on her first book, entitled What is the Wilderness Worth? It investigates the rise of environmental economics and asks: to what extent can these new accounting tools place a value on our remaining nature? Moreover, what are the moral and cultural implications of putting a price on nature?
The concept for this book came from an independent study in environmental economics that she designed at Columbia. She investigated oil production and environmental remediation in Alaska’s North Slope, a place where the scars of industry criss-cross otherwise pristine wilderness. She plans to spend the summer in Alaska documenting abandoned infrastructure and unplugged wells, a common threat to wildlife.
Bosler is also a guide for Fjällräven North America and uses this platform to strengthen community knowledge of local ecology. She hosts talks by explorers and scientists back from the field with wildlife and climate change discoveries.
Some of Bosler’s publications include:
- Cat’s Cradle: The Search for the Andean Feline, where she describes her quest for a snap of the bushy-tail Andean cat;
- New hope for migratory shorebirds: A report from Guatemala, where Bosler discusses the consequences of the transformation of coastal wetlands for agriculture along bird migratory routes;
- Nonhuman Life Should Be Central to Sustainability Problem Solving, where she argues that sustainability problem-solving should include other species as well.
The M.S. in Sustainability Management, co-sponsored by the Earth Institute and Columbia’s School of Professional Studies, trains students to tackle complex and pressing environmental and managerial challenges. Visit our website to learn more.
