Invasive Science

**Blair** (0:00)
This is Twist, This Week in Science, episode number 1068, recorded on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026
Invasive science. Hi, everyone, I'm Blair, and tonight we are going to fill your head with pigs, lizards, and plant cheese.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:20)
But first, thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors for their generous support of Twist. You can become a part of the Patreon community at patreon.com/thisweek in Science.

**Blair** (0:32)
Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Tonight, we will try to hold back our expectations and our preconceived notions. We will recognize the science holds no opinions, it knows numbers and probability. But the people who interpret those, they are human and they have biases. So we will try to check those at the door and revel in the beauty that is This Week in Science, coming up next.
Good science to you, everyone. Good science to you, Dana. We have a guest tonight.
Hello. Hi.
So Dana was so lovely to join us tonight because Kiki is unable to join us as our intrepid host today. So it is just me running the whole show here. You're in trouble, everybody.
But this week's episode of This Week in Science, we have a great show ahead on this show. I have a bunch of science news, but first and foremost, we have a guest. As we jump into the show, though, I want to remind you that subscribing to the Twist Podcast on your favorite podcast platform is a great way to support us. That could be YouTube or Facebook, Twitch, whatever you may have. Also, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Just find us, whatever medium you prefer. And go ahead and listen to Twist each time a new episode is published. Share it with your friends. Just search for This Week in Science, or you can visit twist.org. But we are going to go right into it with our special interview here today. So our guest is Dana Page. She is a trained wildlife biologist, working on large scale regional land management strategies. She has a bachelor's in environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz, and a master's in environmental management from University of San Francisco. Dana has over two decades of experience working throughout the Bay Area on a variety of projects ranging from island restoration off the California coast and SF Bay. I want to hear more about that. Coastal grassland habitat restoration, prescribed fire and rangeland management, just to name a few. So welcome Dana Page.

**Dana Page** (3:19)
Thank you, Blair. I'm so happy to be here.

**Blair** (3:23)
Yeah, I'm so stoked to talk about wildlife management and of course, in particular, California. I'm a local, you're a local, right?

**Dana Page** (3:31)
Yes, I'm a fifth generation Californian, actually.

**Blair** (3:35)
There you go. Yeah. So I feel very connected. It feels very personal to me when I go out in nature in California, particularly around the Bay Area. And I just I feel very passionate about that. So I'm very excited to talk to you about that as well.
Do you want to talk a tiny bit about how you got into this kind of field, or what sparks your joy every day?

**Dana Page** (4:02)
I got into this field, being in California, great weather.
Definitely my dad was a huge influence, and I grew up in a family of four with sisters and a brother. And so my dad was a Cub Scout leader.
And me and my sisters weren't allowed in Cub Scouts, black one. It's different now. It's different now. Yeah, exactly. So I just grew up camping and being outside, and my dad taking us on hikes, and we had a large garden, and we had chickens. And so I was just always exposed to birds and animals. And on my dad's side, my grandfather was a naturalist, my dad was a naturalist. So I definitely got those genetics of enjoying observing nature, and decided at one point in my young adulthood that, man, you got to work your whole life, that dawned on me. And I realized that if I was going to have to work my whole life, I was going to do something that I enjoyed and that I felt passionate about. And it's, you know, I'm a trained biologist, but then just everything that goes with working on large scale projects, doing restoration, like the political side, getting people out to enjoy nature, and just all of those as a biologist kind of work together and make what I do for my professional life as a biologist, but then also I spend a lot of time outside when I'm not at work also.

**Blair** (5:40)
Yeah, I got to say, as someone who has had the pleasure of going on a hike with you, it's just your joy of being outside and the amazing, vast body of knowledge that you carry with you is like so infectious and beautiful. And I'm just so excited to talk to you tonight. So speaking of kind of like the political side of things.