Rachelle Gould

"Let the beauty we love be what we do.”- Rumi, Sufi poet

The words above sum up why Rachelle Gould is working with IPER. Just about any time she gets herself into a natural place and is quiet for ten minutes, why she’s doing what she does is made quite clear. Forest, grassland, beach, marsh, you name it: she loves the complex beauty of those worlds – beauty that results not only from aesthetics, but from spiritual, psychological, and tangible “life support” services (more on that later).

While she loves tromping around forests, she spent most of her undergraduate years working on bringing environmental concerns into the busy minds of of her student peers through Harvard’s Resource Efficiency Program. As anyone who has worked in campus greening will understand, what that actually means is that she has turned off many unused lights and sorted through her fair share of trash cans in search of recyclables. Despite much nagging of her peers at Harvard, she still graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Public Policy.

After undergrad, she spent two learning-filled years in south-central Chile with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and local organizations; her work involved coordinating with various stakeholders in a biological corridor project, and also on understanding the speedy Chilean accent. She then worked briefly with TNC in Washington State, where she once again worked with residents on managing the places they live and love.

That time spent with people and places led her to pursue a Master’s of Forest Science degree at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences. Acting upon her desire to think in new ways, and especially upon her fascination with eastern cosmovisions, she explored the importance of Non Timber Forest Products to different segments of Bhutan’s population. The applied element of this project was a partnership with that small Himalayan country’s emerging Ugyen Wangchuck Environment and Forestry Institute; her results provide support for the incorporation of non-timber forest uses into its curriculum.

In IPER, Rachelle will work on the recognition of the myriad benefits mentioned above – “environmental services” such as water quality, air quality, flood control, pollination, erosion control, carbon sequestration, and perhaps aesthetic/emotional/spiritual benefits. She hopes to create a dynamic communication between the world of implementation and the world of academia, working with the World Wildlife Fund and once again with the The Nature Conservancy.

A few parting words from Emily Dickenson:

“’Nature’ is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.”

So perhaps the goal is to elucidate, even a bit more, that fundamentally simple “what we know.“ While our wisdom will never fully capture, in Dickenson’s words, nature’s simplicity, Rachelle helps to contribute somehow to the collective effort.