Writing

Bruce Byers has been writing to inform and inspire readers about natural history, ecology, and conservation for decades. “In Our Place,” his monthly column in the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper (Boulder, Colorado) ran from 1991 to 1992. Starting in 2011, he has posted more than 135 stories on his blog, Ecologia: Essays and Adventures from Bruce Byers Consulting. The essays combine elements of travel writing and creative nonfiction nature writing, and are illustrated with photos, in a photojournalistic style. They take readers along on consulting trips and personal travels to diverse ecosystems in dozens of countries.

The View from Cascade Head: Lessons for the Biosphere from the Oregon Coast, a collection of creative nonfiction nature essays about the UNESCO Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, was published by Oregon State University Press in 2020. Research and writing for this book began when Bruce was the Howard L. McKee Ecology Resident at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology (Otis, Oregon) in the fall of 2018.

In October 2019, Bruce was a visiting scholar and writer-in-residence at the U.S. Forest Service’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascades, under the auspices of the Oregon State University’s Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. He produced a series of short vignettes dealing with ecology, evolution, and ecophilosophy, Ten Questions in the Andrews Forest. Bruce was a writer-in-residence at The Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes Station, California, in June 2021, where he began research and writing for a forthcoming book about the Golden Gate and Channel Islands Biosphere Reserves. He continued that process while a visiting scientist at the University of California-Santa Barbara’s Sedgwick and Santa Cruz Island Reserves (October 2021) and the University of California-Berkeley’s Point Reyes Field Station (April 2022).

His recent writing has appeared in Ecotone, The Ecological Citizen, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and the bilingual Patagon Journal.