Gabriel I. Gadsden

Gabriel I. Gadsden

Doctoral Candidate
Yale School of the Environment
Gabriel I. Gadsden is a second-year PhD Student in the Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab, led by Dr. Nyeema C. Harris. An energy justice scholar and ecologist by training his research now focuses on understanding how energy inefficient housing relates to the behavior of urban rodents and what that means for human health, human wildlife conflict, and urban wildlife coexistence. He is currently a committee member of BIOMES, Yale School of the Environment’s student-led speaker series and recently co-authored a paper in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science entitled Academic Engagement with Wadden Sea Stakeholders: A Review of Past Foci and Possible Futures the culmination of the Global Sustainability Scholars (GSS) Fellowship he completed before starting at Yale.
 
Living in an inefficient home is dangerous. Freezing temperatures in winter and sweltering heat in the summer put people at risk of hypothermia and heat stroke while coping mechanisms expose residents to air pollution and other environmental hazards. If that were not bad enough, people are not the only ones living in these homes. Wildlife like rodents find themselves in homes too, especially during winter, but have you ever thought to yourself how do they get inside? I had not, until one day I was reading about urban raccoon denning sites and then an article on the characteristics of inefficient housing. I realized the same ways homes becomes inefficient, the holes in the walls, gaps under doors, and little to no insulation were often the same pathways wildlife use to enter homes; the same wildlife that shed allergens and carry pathogens like Leptospira, Hantavirus, and Lymphocytic choriomeningitis. If in fact inefficiency was related to wildlife in homes it would mean people already living with dangerous temperatures, are being disproportionately exposed to zoonotic diseases. Concerned but motivated, I am now using Philadelphia PA, as a case study, obtaining home energy scores, and using a mix of natural and social methods to test to what degree residential energy efficiency affects the abundance and diversity of rodents in homes and what pathogens and allergens are most prevalent?

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