I am a wildlife conservation scientist with over 25 years’ experience conducting, leading, and training graduate students to do rigorous science to enhance the conservation of wildlife and the wildlands they depend on through North America and the globe. Our research focuses first on understanding the ecology of large, wide-ranging mammals such as large ungulates (elk, caribou), and their large carnivore predators (wolves, grizzly bears, felids). And second on how to conserve these iconic, large mammal predator-prey systems in the face of all the growing pressures of the Anthropocene. Thirdly, our work focuses on translating science to changes in management, policy, and on-the-ground conservation success.
My students and I have published ~ 250 scientific papers, many in high-ranking journals such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Ecology & Evolution, as well as key applied journals like the Journal of Wildlife Management. We have obtained over $13 million USD in collaborative funding to support our conservation science from Federal, State, NGO, and Industry partners. I teach applied habitat conservation, research design, advanced statistical models and introductory biostatistics at the undergraduate and graduate level. I have provided scientific advice to scientific funding agencies, Universities, state, federal and provincial government agencies, and through decades of board service to conservation organizations such as Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. My students and I have also collaborated on half a dozen initiatives with Indigenous governments to enhance conservation of wildlife and wildlands, often with a focus on species like Caribou and Bison.
My students – which I believe are amongst my most important contributions - have gone on to careers in academia, state, federal and provincial wildlife managers, and as non-governmental conservation scientists. We make communicating the results of our conservation science to the public the highest priority and have been the subject of >1,000 media communications. And most importantly, together we have linked science to on-the-ground changes in wildlife conservation, management and policy in dozens of case studies from local to global scales.
