Skylar Benedict

Skylar Jeppesen Benedict is a PhD student in Sociocultural and Applied Environmental Anthropology interested in collaborative approaches to estuary conservation, multispecies relationships, environmental racism, and decolonizing forestry policies. Before coming to the University of Arizona, Skylar received a master's degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (2017) and a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts with a concentration in anthropology from Florida Atlantic University's Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College. Prior to moving to Tucson, he worked in conservation project management and communications. Since joining the University, he has supported mapping work in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, provided graduate grant proposal support at the Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, and recently completed a Fulbright Garcia-Robles Scholarship in Sonora, Mexico.

Project: Supporting and Analyzing the Dynamics of Ecological Restoration Projects in Bahía de Kino, Sonora.

Skylar's fellowship project constitutes part of his doctoral research examining the formation of social relationships, practices, and processes of navigating bureaucracy in local conservation projects in Bahía de Kino. The Fellowship project specifically examined and supports two initiatives. The first project is a multi-stage campaign to promote seasonal fishing bans for Kino’s fisheries. The second project is a workshop to provide a prominent community group training in repopulating mangroves in Kino's nearby wetland, Laguna la Cruz. While these ecological restoration processes are often celebrated in the community, their histories are contested and the politics around funding and successfully carrying out such projects are complex. This Fellowship research project will provide an analysis of how these projects are carried out; the work behind them, their pitfalls, and their successes.