Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D.

Nicolette L Cagle, Ph.D.

Connecting People and Nature So Both Can Flourish

My work begins with small, local acts: learning the name of a tree, following a turtle’s path across a fragmented landscape, or noticing the human histories held in an old roadbed. These acts of attention may seem small, but they can transform a place into a relationship. Across my work as an ecologist, educator, interpreter, and author, I help people learn places more fully, and use that knowledge to care for the living communities to which we belong.

Dr. Nicki Cagle, Senior Lecturer in Ecology & Environmental Education

I am a Senior Lecturer in Ecology & Environmental Education at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and the inaugural Director of Natural & Cultural Resources Interpretation at Duke Forest. For more than two decades, I have worked across ecology, environmental education, natural history, interpretation, writing, and public engagement. Although these fields offer different ways of knowing the world, they are joined in my work by a single commitment: connecting people and nature so both can flourish.

By connecting people and nature, I mean more than encouraging people to spend time outdoors. I mean helping students and communities develop the knowledge, practical abilities, curiosity, and sense of belonging that allow them to participate responsibly in the natural world. Sometimes that begins with scientific skills, e.g., measuring a forest, identifying a woody plant, designing a wildlife survey, or analyzing an animal’s movement across a landscape. Sometimes it begins with history, cultural knowledge, ethical reflection, or a story embedded in a particular place. Often, it begins simply by slowing down enough to notice.

Learn more about my path, experience, and approach →

Ecology, Education, and Interpretation

My work spans several interconnected areas:

  • Applied conservation ecology, especially herpetology, wildlife surveys, forest ecosystems, habitat connectivity, long-term monitoring, and the ecological consequences of landscape change;

  • Field-based teaching and mentorship, including Forest Measurements, Dendrology, Wildlife Surveys, environmental education, interpretation, academic writing, and interdisciplinary student projects;

  • Natural and cultural resource interpretation, with particular attention to how ecology, history, culture, and lived experience shape our understanding of landscapes;

  • Environmental education and curriculum development, including active learning, pedagogies of care, culturally inclusive teaching, environmental identity, and the emerging idea of a biospheric curriculum; and

  • Public writing and communication, through books, essays, interpretive materials, public programs, and resources that make ecological knowledge more accessible and meaningful.

These are not separate professional identities. Together, they form one body of work concerned with how we come to know the living world, how knowledge becomes relationship, and how relationship might grow into care.

Teaching for Skill, Belonging, and Care

My teaching is grounded in direct experience. Students learn ecology by practicing it: measuring trees, working through dichotomous keys, listening for birds and frogs, checking coverboards, setting camera traps, interpreting field data, and communicating what they have learned to others. Courses such as Forest Measurements, Dendrology, and Wildlife Surveys and Sampling provide students with rigorous scientific and professional skills while also asking larger questions about evidence, uncertainty, ethics, land management, and our responsibilities toward the organisms we study.

My teaching principle is “High standards, high support: Tough on ideas and kind to people.” I want students to be challenged while also feeling respected, supported, and able to belong in environmental fields. A Duke Gardens feature on immersive learning offers one view of how practical skills, close observation, reflection, and wonder come together in my courses.

I also mentor Master’s Projects, independent studies, and collaborative research teams focused on wildlife conservation, forest ecology, bird–window collisions, environmental identity, interpretation, and community-engaged conservation. Explore my formal teaching, meet students working in the Cagle Lab, or browse projects completed by past graduate students.

Ecological Investigations in Service to Learning

Through the Cagle Lab, students participate in ecological and environmental education investigations that contribute to real conservation and management questions. Our work includes long-term amphibian and reptile monitoring in Duke Forest, Eastern Box Turtle movement and conservation, bird–window collision monitoring and detectability, wildlife survey methods, forest biotic inventories, environmental identity, and interpretive research.

Current work includes the Bass Connections project Connecting Amphibians and Reptiles: An Ecology and Rights of Nature Approach. This collaboration brings field ecology, GIS, ethics, environmental humanities, and community partnerships into conversation through research on turtles, salamanders, and landscape connectivity. Learn more through “Creating Corridors for Amphibians and Reptiles” and Duke Today’s “The Turtle Who Wants to Cross the Road.”

Our bird–window collision research demonstrates another dimension of this approach: student observations developed into sustained research, institutional collaboration, and practical mitigation on Duke’s campus. Across these projects, students learn that trustworthy ecological knowledge emerges through carefully framed questions, repeated observation, ethical field methods, responsible data practices, collaboration, and honest attention to uncertainty.

Explore applied conservation ecology →

Interpreting Living Landscapes

At Duke Forest, I work at the meeting place of ecology, history, education, and public engagement. The Forest is simultaneously a research landscape, an outdoor classroom, a managed forest, a refuge for biodiversity, and a place carrying many layers of human history. My role includes developing interpretive programs and educational experiences, supporting experiential learning, conducting natural and cultural history research, collaborating with partners across Duke and the wider community, and helping guide a long-term vision for interpretation throughout the Forest.

This role builds upon more than a decade of work with Duke Forest, including the Herpetofauna Community Science Program, research supporting the Forest’s land acknowledgment, and Unearthing Duke Forest, an interpretive trail focused on the people who lived on and shaped this land. These projects reflect my belief that ecological interpretation is strongest when it recognizes landscapes as both living systems and places formed through human relationships, choices, labor, stewardship, and change.

Writing from a Sense of Place

My public-facing website, Sense of Place: Field Notes on Ecology, History, and Belonging, is a home for essays, photographs, and natural and cultural history observations. There, I explore how close attention to animals, plants, landscapes, art, language, food, memory, and history can deepen our understanding of place. Visitors can explore writing about animals, plants and fungi, cultural and historical sites, and a growing photographic archive of places.

My book, Saving Snakes: Snakes and the Evolution of a Field Naturalist, brings personal experience into conversation with ecological research, natural history, cultural history, and conservation. It asks how people learn to fear particular animals, how those beliefs influence conservation, and whether fuller knowledge can help transform fear into respect. Duke Today’s “Snakes: Why We Need to Live Peacefully With Them” provides an introduction to the book and its central questions.

I also serve as a co-editor of the University of Virginia Press’s Ecologia series, which publishes creative nonfiction exploring ecological systems and the complex relationships among organisms, people, cultures, and places.

Experience and Preparation

I hold a Ph.D. in Ecology from Duke University, where my research examined landscape-scale patterns in snake distributions, and a B.S. in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, summa cum laude, from the University of Illinois. My professional preparation also includes certification as a National Association for Interpretation Certified Interpretive Trainer, North Carolina Certified Environmental Educator, Certified Master Naturalist, and Cambridge CELTA instructor.

Before assuming my current role at Duke Forest, I served in leadership positions spanning teaching, science communication, research translation, mentoring, and public engagement. These included Associate Dean at the Nicholas School, Director of Research Translation for the Duke Superfund Research Center, founding Director of the Nicholas School Communications Studio, and instructor in Duke’s former Thompson Writing Program—now the Writing and Rhetoric Program. I have also taught Plant Ecology, Soil Ecology, and Piedmont Savanna Ecology through the North Carolina Botanical Garden’s former Native Plant Studies program, now the Certificate and Advanced Certificate in Native Plants.

My teaching and environmental education work has been recognized with the Lynn Maguire Award for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring of Professional Students, the North Carolina Environmental Educator of the Year Award, the Duke Forest Clarence F. Korstian Award, the Nicholas School Woman in Environment Environmental Achievement Award, and the Duke University Outstanding Leadership in Sustainability Award—Faculty.

Explore selected publications and writings →

Find Your Way into the Work

Whether you are a student, educator, naturalist, conservation practitioner, potential collaborator, or simply someone trying to know the living world more fully, I invite you to explore:

However you arrive, I hope something here invites you to look again: to recognize a relationship, ask a more careful question, or become more deeply acquainted with a place. Attention is only a beginning, but it is often how knowledge, relationship, and care first take root.