When Josiah Utsch ’24 was 11 years old, his grandmother sent him a New York Times article about how the nautilus, Utsch’s favorite animal, was going extinct. Utsch was devastated and decided he wanted to help protect them. In researching what organizations might already be dedicated to the cause, Utsch found nothing.
“Before the New York Times article, I don’t think anyone knew anything about it. It was practically an unknown issue,” says Utsch, an Organismal Biology & Ecology major at CC. “I mean, I’ve seen biologists who worked their whole life to protect endangered fisheries. They have nautilus shell-laden toilets in national parks. So even prominent environmentalists have no idea, and if they don’t know then the public really had no hope. After weeks of searching, I was kind of desperate.”
Utsch reached out to Professor Dr. Peter Ward, a paleontologist and professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington who was quoted in the NY Times article, to see if there was anything he could do to help. Ward, one of the world’s leading nautilus researchers, explained that there wasn’t any kind of organization specific to the preservation of the nautilus, but that if Utsch felt passionately about the issue, he should start something. Thus, Save the Nautilus was born.
With the help of his parents, Utsch founded the conservation non-profit, starting with a website, and began to raise awareness. In only a few months, Save the Nautilus was featured on NPR and in National Geographic, and from there people started contacting him for information about how they could help.
“It was really kid driven,” Utsch says. “We had so many of our donations from one to five dollars and ten dollars from seven-year-olds who donated their lunch money, or one kid who walked dogs for a month. There was one school in LA that literally picked coins off the street and then donated that to our foundation.”
Utsch and Ward began working together to raise awareness and money to further study and ultimately protect the nautilus. Working together and with other researchers, including conservation biologist Dr. Gregory Barord, they were able to collect enough data to get the nautilus listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. In 2016 they were able to get the nautilus included in appendix II of the global treaty Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which protects endangered species from going extinct due to international trade. The inclusion of the nautilus in the appendix will help ensure that international trade will be legal and sustainable. Most recently, Utsch was contacted by Scholastic Magazine wanting to feature him in a story for their young readers.
In 2018, Utsch, whom Barord calls “a ferocious intellect, and one who climbs mountains and scales hard problems,” and the Save the Nautilus team led an expedition in Fiji, where they surveyed the nautilus population in an area they’ve never been seen before. This expedition kicked off a five-year plan to work in Fiji to survey nautilus populations and develop long-term sampling techniques to continue the conservation efforts in the region.
After his time at CC, Utsch plans to continue his work.
“I don’t want to go to grad school right away, but I do in the future. I do want to get a higher degree,” he says. “I want to continue to work with the nautilus. We’ll see whether I get my PhD someday and become a full-blown researcher. That would be really awesome, but I’m still trying to figure it all out. There’s a lot of things to consider, but I still want to continue getting the word out.”
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