Dr. Jerry Jackson is known to WGCU listeners as the creator and host of With the Wild Things, heard weekday mornings at 7:19 and weekday afternoons at 5:18. He’s a professor emeritus of Ecological Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University, and a professor emeritus at Mississippi State University. But he’s also a renowned wildlife biologist and ornithologist who has done a whole lot over his career, including publishing many peer-reviewed papers, and publishing or contributing to hundreds of articles.
Dr. Jackson was also Principal Scientist, and appeared in, the feature-length movie Ghost Bird which explores the Ivory-billed woodpecker, a species that is probably extinct but whose continued existence remains highly debated. Dr. Jackson wrote the book, if you will, on the bird titled “In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker” published in 2004.
Nick Penniman is a retired newspaper publisher, and he is chair emeritus of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and a Florida Master Naturalist. He and Dr. Jackson gave a talk together at Florida Gulf Coast University last week as part of the school’s Provost’s Seminar Series titled Getting to Know the World Around You: an Illustrated Conversation” so we had them come by the studio to chat.
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