Margaret Swift
Education: PhD ’23, Duke University in Environment
Cornell Adviser: Steven Osofsky (CVM)
External Partner: Robin Naidoo (World Wildlife Fund)
Theme: Advancing One Health
Simulating Sustainability Through a One Health Lens
Margaret Swift is a 2023 Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow. Veterinary fencing crisscrosses much of southern Africa, protecting livestock from disease transfer but preventing wild mammals from migrating seasonally to access grazing and water resources. This project will use advanced computer modeling to investigate how elephants currently move about southern Africa’s Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, the largest such landscape in Africa, and how elephant movement patterns might change if alternative approaches to livestock disease management less dependent upon fencing were adopted. By simulating migrations utilizing real-world elephant tracking data, potential scenarios for integrative, sustainable land-use management become easier to understand and evaluate.