Student Research Projects Also Suffer when Serious Natural Disasters Strike, When Timing Throws a Curve Ball

Evan Eifler from the University of Wisconsin, Madison who is attempting to raise funds to help him collect and study and obscure biodiverse genus in South Africa.

Most of us care – and often at all levels. Help is needed most everywhere, so we who can, spread what support we can offer around the best we can. Allow me to share this student who I randomly came across today through an email from a bulb society. For many reasons, I could relate (As in: It was 1978 and I was raising money to participate in a student research project in Hudon Bay Canada defining feeding assemblages with sub-arctic avifauna and how they interacted with plant species……)

Meet Evan Eifler, I don’t know him, have never met him, and in fact only just read a group email from him (on my Pacific Bulb Society distribution list) which I read this morning while watching the updates on the hurricanes. I think helping him might be something we could all do to help him reach his goal in 18 days. I noticed that he just arrived in South Africa and has already seen two species of Geissoriza, a small bulb with a large number of species, most are lovely yet small. So little in known about this genus, that his study may uncover over the next few months.

I’ve included a few links here to his crowdsourcing page, and even though he is already in South Africa, I would imagine that the will be able to accomplish so much more if he gets some help financially during this time of refocused donations do to two very severe natural disasters. I suppose, in some way, scientific and especially botanical research is experiencing a bit to a natural disaster at the moment too, ( if you know what I mean).

Evan Eifler, a research graduate student from the University of Wisconsin, Madison has posted fundraising effort of a crowdsourcing site for scientists and research students to help him complete his project.

Yes, I’ve literally sat and watched about 48 hours of hurricane coverage. On social media, I’ve been reading all of the posts from those affected and sometimes their loved ones who might be searching for their pets or friends, yet then, I ran across this one email – a thank your note sent to a small group of donors on the Pacific Pub Society web distribution list. This request for really, not that much money was completely under my radar. If you would want to help a total stranger, but what appears to be a dedicated and focused research student as he attempts to collect DNA and samples from a curious genus of plants with the goals of bringing some order to a muddled taxonomy, please take this opportunity.

Evan is well known it seems among research students, he was awarded a scholarship a year and a half ago by the Botanical Society of America as seed money for this project.

Anyway, this struck me as something I might like to contribute a bit to also, as these projects often fail without support during tough times. If interested, you can give here:

HELP EVAN RESEARCH AND COLLECT IN THE CAPE FLORISTIC REGION.