Over the past few weeks, Santa Cruz Naturalist producer Chloe Rickards interviewed three different employees or associates of the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History at UC Santa Cruz. The Norris Center is a combination museum, teaching center, and research center – all revolving around its massive collection of preserved specimens. From lichen to golden eagles, the Norris Center has over 130,000 items in its collection. Some of these items are on display in the center’s lobby, some are set aside to supplement classes such as Entomology and Mammology, and others are kept as preserved data points for long-running ecological experiments.
In this series, Chloe started off by interviewing Dmitrius Rodriguez, a recent Bachelor’s graduate from UCSC who worked with the Norris Center on predicting and preventing bird-window collisions. Chloe also interviewed the Norris Center’s resident entomologist, Dr. Andy Kulikowski. Finally, Chloe interviewed Dr. Gizelle Hurtado, a mammologist and the Assistant Director of the Norris Center.
The last episode in the Norris Center Naturalist airs this week, and you can hear it Tuesday at 7:55am, Tuesday at 3:55pm, or Friday at 3:55 pm. This week’s episode is Part 2 of the interview with Dr. Gizelle Hurtado. You can listen to Part 1 of Dr. Hurtado’s interview – along with Mx. Rodriguez’s and Dr. Kulikowski’s interviews – on your podcast platform of choice. Part 1 of Dr. Hurtado’s interview is also linked here in this post.
