Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

Gregg Treinish’s turning point came somewhere between mountain ranges and moral unease. Years of wandering through wilderness had left him restless.

“I was spending years in the wilderness, doing long expeditions, and I began to feel selfish for being out there without making a difference,” Treinish told Mongabay in an interview.

The result of that reckoning was Adventure Scientists, a nonprofit that turns outdoor enthusiasts into data collectors for conservation and research.

The idea was simple: hikers, divers and climbers already reach places scientists rarely can. Train them well enough, and they can gather data with professional rigor. A decade later, those volunteers have mapped microplastics in the ocean, traced illegal timber through supply chains, and helped catalog the genetic fabric of California’s biodiversity.

Treinish insists he is no genius. “I have no special skills as a scientist or as an adventurer,” he says.

Yet his humility conceals the insight that passion, when organized, can be an engine for discovery.

In an age of automation, Adventure Scientists bets on the power of human perception: the smell of soil before rain, a strange bird call, a bloom that shouldn’t be there. The science begins where curiosity meets discipline.

Read the full interview with Gregg Treinish here.

Banner image: Gregg Treinish in Botswana’s Okavango. Image courtesy of Shah Selbe.