Meet our 2026 Gloria Barron scholars!

Every year, The Wilderness Society is proud to empower the next generation of conservation leaders through the Gloria Barron Wilderness Society Scholarship. Named in honor of a devoted educator and conservationist, the scholarship provides project funding for graduate students seeking to understand and protect our natural world.

On the surface, this year’s selected projects appear to have little in common: One examines how cycles of vegetative build-up and drying in the West are contributing to wildfires; the other is exploring how bird communities around national parks are changing in the East. At their core, however, both projects share a central concern: the tangible impacts of our planet’s rapidly shifting climate.

"One of the best parts of my job is getting to help support the next generation of conservation leaders via the Gloria Barron Scholarship program,” The Wilderness Society’s Director of Research, Mariah Meek, PhD remarked, “Bruna Rodrigues do Amaral and Kelsey Warren blew us away with their dedication and innovative science. We are so excited to have them join The Wilderness Society team."

Meet this year’s scholars and learn about their projects:

Bruna grew up in southern Brazil, not far from the borders of Argentina and Uruguay. Though she grew up in a big city where access to nature was seriously limited, joining the Girl Scouts built her connection with the outdoors. “Growing up in Brazil, things could be a little hard sometimes,” Bruna said, “But going out into nature, there was so much peace and connection to be found.”

When she first pursued an education in biology, Bruna took an interest in flora specifically. “I used to collect flowers and press them. But when I started the classes, I realized I was most excited by field-based work: being outdoors, observing animals and asking questions about how they interact with their environment.” After joining a lab focused on birds, she became engrossed. “I had always liked math, although I hadn’t felt especially encouraged to pursue it in school. In the bird lab, I saw how quantitative analysis and modeling could help answer complex ecological questions, and I found that combination of field ecology and analytical work really compelling.”

Bruna moved to the United States for graduate school in 2019 and quickly fell in love with the National Parks System. “I was impressed by the National Park System and by how much infrastructure exists to help people access and experience protected land. In Brazil, especially in large cities, this kind of regular access to nature can be harder to find.”  

This love for national parks and her childhood experience with urban parks is at the core of her project. Using data from 38 smaller national park sites in the Northeast—like Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, her personal favorite—Bruna will analyze how these parks as well as their surrounding environments are contributing to conservation of bird communities. She’ll look at factors like proximity to urban development and overall size with the intention of identifying overall patterns to guide management.

“These small parks are really important, and we cannot think of conservation as something that happens only inside of their boundaries. The surrounding landscape and the communities who live, work, and make decisions there shape what is possible for wildlife. We need a more connected approach that supports both people and conservation "

Asked about her favorite species, Bruna quickly singled out the black-throated blue warbler. “It was one of the first species I had a really good look at in [Marsh-Billings]. There was a male that was behaving aggressively and I realized, ‘Oh, you have a nest.’ 10 minutes later the female appeared and I found their nest with 3 nestlings. That was very, very special.”

Bruna stressed how grateful and honored she is to be selected for the scholarship. “Support like this is especially meaningful at a challenging time for many scientists, and it makes me feel valued and encouraged in my work. I’m incredibly happy and excited for what this opportunity will make possible.”

Kelsey’s hometown of Santa Barbara, CA is often regarded as the birthplace of the modern American environmental movement after the events of the 1969 oil spill—a fact that deeply influenced her childhood. “I was always a science kid and I was always outside. My parents would take us camping in the Sierras when we were younger a lot, and I kind of fell in love with the mountains through those experiences.”

Unfortunately, not all of Kelsey’s childhood environmental experiences were positive. “Throughout my childhood we experienced a bunch of wildfires in Santa Barbara and the surrounding area. I was evacuated multiple times in my childhood, and it became such a norm for our parents to say, ‘Okay pack your bags: we’re heading out, we’re evacuating.’”

Studying biology in undergrad, Kelsey flipped between a medical and ecological focus. It was only after moving to Lake Tahoe for a gap year that she made a final determination. “As I was finishing up my med school interviews, I kind of had this reawakening to environmental science. I was living in a very small town near Tahoe and suddenly realized, ‘Wow, the changing timing and amount of snowfall here directly impact this community's livelihood.’ Then I started wondering about the impacts on the forest and the ecosystem, and that led to my master’s.”

Kelsey enrolled in the UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, a pivotal experience she credits with grounding her current thinking. “All of my scientific thinking now is, ‘How is this going to be applied?’ Not just researching for the sake of it but really tailoring it to problems that need urgent help.”

That’s led Kelsey, now a Ph.D. student at CU Boulder, to focus on one of the most immediate issues facing the western United States: wildfires. “In the simplest terms, research shows we’re seeing wildfires at sizes and rates we just haven’t seen before.”  

Harking back to her experience in Lake Tahoe, Kelsey is focusing on the relationship between snowpack and fire. In the western United States, snow is a critical water resource. Research has shown links between a single year’s snowpack and fire, but Kelsey said beyond this, things are blurry.  

“My goal is to understand if there are distinct vegetation patterns linking the snow to the fire beyond one year. Maybe there’s a really strong snowfall two years before the fire, so all the grasses and underbrush build up to be lush and thriving—but then the next year there’s not enough snowfall, all that vegetation dries out and you’re really primed for a fire. I’m hoping that understanding this relationship will help inform land management.”

To that end, Kelsey is grateful for the scholarship not only because it will allow her to focus more on her research, but also because of the opportunity to disseminate her research and inspire other young scientists. “I'm planning to talk through my research process with undergraduate students in the CU Boulder Snow Internship Program to engage them in conversations about how their research can have bigger implications.”