Richmond resident Joe Roman is a conservation biologist and marine ecologist, and will present how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying—and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe. Joe's latest book, Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World explores how forests are the lungs of the planet, and animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains—eating, pooping, and dying along the way—are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.

Winner of the 2012 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Listed: Dispatches from America's Endangered Species Act, Joe Roman has written for the New York Times, Science, Audubon, New Scientist, Slate, and other publications. Like many of the animals he studies, Joe is a free-range biologist. He has worked at Harvard University, Duke University Marine Lab, University of Iceland, University of Havana, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the University of Vermont, where he is a fellow and writer in residence at the Gund Institute for Environment. Copies of "Eat, Poop, Die" will be available for purchase at Joe's presentation.

Event Info

Jan 14, 2025, 12 to 1:15 PM

Jan 15, 2025, 7 PM

Jan 17, 2025, 5:30 to 9 PM