Rachael Gross

Rachael Gross is in the final year of her Ph.D. at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. She is looking at how African Savanna Elephants (Loxodonta africana) are responding to climate change with a focus on their susceptibility to drought using GIS. She shows how focusing on community voices and decolonisation is the key to future elephant management and conservation. Her project sits at the intersection of conservation and ecology, GIS, community-based management, and climate change and focuses both on the continental meta-population and case studies in Botswana and Namibia.

Prior to starting a PhD in 2019, Rachael completed a Bachelor of Science majoring in biodiversity conservation and Indigenous sciences before completing Honours in 2017. Her honours project was also on how elephants are responding to climate change but focused more on behaviour than broad ecology. Rachael also teaches undergraduate courses and more broadly loves working in science communication and outreach.