Our Board of Advisors brings together a team that represents all aspects of wolves, revealing how the wild world interacts with the human world. This diversified group of distinguished individuals includes leaders at major universities, Western ranchers, ethical hunters, scientists and wolf recovery consultants and outfitters specializing in wolf watching tourism. We’re honored to have their knowledge available to advise our own work.
Dr. Bekoff taught courses in animal behavior and compassionate conservation for 32 years at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is now Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Marc’s main areas of research include animal behavior, cognitive ethology (the study of animal minds), behavioral ecology, and compassionate conservation. Throughout his career, he studied the social behavior and behavioral ecology of domestic dogs and coyotes and Adelie penguins and other birds.
Dr. Bekoff received his Ph.D. with honors from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society, and has been awarded the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society for major long-term contributions to the field of animal behavior, and the St. Francis of Assisi Award by the New Zealand S.P.C.A., among other honors.
Dr. Bekoff and Dr. Jane Goodall co-founded the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He serves as a member of the Ethics Committee of The Jane Goodall Institute, where he is also an ambassador for the Roots and Shoots program, working with students of all ages, senior citizens and prisoners.
Marc has also published extensively on animal behavior and animal protection, including more than 1000 papers (research, book chapters, and popular) and 31 books, including Minding Animals; The Ten Trusts (with Dr. Jane Goodall); the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior; The Emotional Lives of Animals; Animals Matter; Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals (with Jessica Pierce); and The Animal Manifesto: Six Reasons for Expanding our Compassion Footprint.
His latest books include Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation, Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence, The Animals’ Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age (with Jessica Pierce), and Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Do What They Do. Marc also writes regularly for Psychology Today. Marc’s homepage is marcbekoff.com.
Kira is a research associate with the Yellowstone Wolf Project where she started in 2007 following the Druid Peak and Agate Creek packs during the program’s intensive winter studies. In 2013 Kira completed a Master of Science degree through the University of Minnesota advised by Dr. L. David Mech with projects focusing on wolf pack behavior and territoriality. In her current position, Kira has continued to examine how wolf pack social behavior impacts the species’ life history and also how pack dynamics compare to other social mammals, including humans.
Kira’s aims are to uncover interesting patterns and stories in wolf pack behavior and to communicate those findings to the scientific community through peer-reviewed publications and also to the public through writings, presentations, and art. After spending two summers on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada assisting documentary crews filming arctic wolves, Kira decided to dedicate more effort into communicating science to the public in ways that are educational and enjoyable.
Kira presented findings from her Master’s thesis related to the value of elder wolves to the pack’s success in a TEDx talk in Bozeman in April 2016. In the presentation, which has been viewed online over 14,000 times, Kira explains the science behind the value of accumulated knowledge with age in wolves, elephants, and orcas and then compares this effect and behavior to humans, calling on humans to treat each other better by being more like animals.
Mr. Derr is an independent scholar and journalist broadly concerned with the relationship of human beings to the natural and built worlds.
Mark’s latest book, published in 2011, is How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends. His other books include, A Dog’s History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered and Settled a Continent; Dog’s Best Friend: Annals of the Dog-Human Relationship; The Frontiersman: The Real Life and the Many Legends of Davy Crockett; and Some Kind of Paradise: A Chronicle of Man and the Land in Florida.
His March 1990 cover story in The Atlantic Monthly, “The Politics of Dogs,” chronicled the overbreeding of dogs for show and for commerce and set off a national debate. In addition to The Atlantic Monthly, Mark’s articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Audubon, The Bark, Natural History, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Sierra, and The New York Times. He was curator for the now defunct “Times Topics Blog: Dogs” in The New York Times.
Mr. Derr received his bachelor’s degree in humanistic studies from The Johns Hopkins University and his master’s degree from The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. He lives in Miami Beach, Florida.
Dr. Eisenberg is the Chief Scientist at Earthwatch Institute. Her responsibilities include developing strategic initiatives to explore key environmental sustainability issues and establishing partnerships with principal investigators. As an ecologist she studies wolves and fire in Rocky Mountain ecosystems. She has a master’s degree in conservation biology from Prescott College and a Ph.D. in Forestry and Wildlife from Oregon State University, where she studied food web linkages and the factors that can shape plant communities and ecosystems. Dr. Eisenberg has conducted research on trophic cascades involving wolves, elk, and aspen in Glacier National Park, Montana and currently in Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada, where she focuses on the context dependency of these relationships, and on how the combined effects of fire and wolves can create trophic cascades.
Dr. Eisenberg is a Smithsonian Research Associate, a Boone and Crockett Club professional member, and the nonfiction editor of the literary journal Whitefish Review. Her books for Island Press include The Carnivore Way: Coexisting with and Conserving America’s Predators and The Wolf’s Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity. She is at work on her third book, Taking the Heat: Wildlife, Food Webs and Extinction in a Warming World. For two decades Dr. Eisenberg lived with her family in a remote, wild corner of northwest Montana, and currently lives in Massachusetts, in a farmhouse near Walden Pond.
Ms. Fox is founder and Executive Director of Project Coyote, a national nonprofit organization that promotes educated coexistence between people and coyotes, and advocates on behalf of coyotes and other native carnivores. She is a wildlife consultant, and serves as an advisory board member to several national wildlife organizations.
Camilla has also served as an appointed member of the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Services Advisory Committee, and currently serves on the steering committee of the international Human Wildlife Conflict Collaboration. She was awarded the Humanitarian of the Year Award by the Marin Humane Society, and received the Christine Stevens Wildlife Award.
Ms. Fox holds a master’s degree in environmental studies with a focus on wildlife ecology, policy and conservation from Prescott College, and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University, where she graduated magna cum laude.
With more than 19 years of experience working on behalf of wildlife and wild land, she has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today Magazine, several films, and on the BBC and NPR. A frequent speaker on wildlife issues, she has also contributed articles to more than 70 publications, and is producer of the award-winning documentary Cull of the Wild: the Truth Behind Trapping. Ms. Fox is co-author of Coyotes in Our Midst: Coexisting with an Adaptable and Resilient Carnivore, and co-editor and lead author of the book Cull of the Wild: A Contemporary Analysis of Trapping in the United States.
Dr. Master has served as chief zoologist for The Nature Conservancy and their NatureServe program for 19 years, overseeing the development of its network’s central zoological databases, and as a leader in its development of a network of natural heritage programs in every U.S. state and Canadian province.
Most recently, Dr. Master co-led a successful effort to put NatureServe’s conservation status assessment methodology on a more solid foundation through the development of a rank calculator and integration with International Union for Conservation of Nature methodology. Larry began working for The Nature Conservancy in 1980 in Michigan, subsequently directing the first Regional Heritage Task Force, initiating and directing their Vermont and New Hampshire Natural Heritage programs and initiating and supporting other heritage programs in the Conservancy’s 13-state Northeast Region. He has been photographing wildlife and natural history subjects for more than 50 years.
He continues to serve on NatureServe’s board of directors and on the local boards of national and regional conservation organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society, the Adirondack Council and as a member of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Adirondack Advisory Group. Larry is active in local Adirondack efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and conducts surveys on bats and in other areas for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Dr. Master was a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board for seven years, and participated in multi-year projects at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment.
He is co-author of Rivers of Life: Critical Watersheds for Protecting Freshwater Biodiversity, which he conceived, and has written numerous other publications such as Threats to Imperiled Freshwater Fauna and Assessing Threats and Setting Priorities for Conservation, both for Conservation Biology. Dr. Master completed his doctoral and post-doctoral studies at the University of Michigan, working with mammals to investigate ecological and evolutionary paradigms.
Carter Niemeyer has Bachelor of Science (1970) and Masters (1973) degrees in Wildlife Biology from Iowa State University. He has been a state trapper for the Montana Department of Livestock, and a district supervisor for USDA Wildlife Services in western Montana managing and controlling large predators. He was the wolf management specialist for USDA Wildlife Services covering the states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming where he was responsible for conducting livestock depredation investigations, as well as wolf capture for research, relocation or removal. Niemeyer was a member of the wolf capture team in Canada during the wolf reintroduction program of the mid-1990s.
In 2001, working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he ran the wolf recovery program in Idaho. Carter retired in 2006, coincidentally on the same day that wolf management was officially handed over from the federal government to the state of Idaho. He also has worked on wolf issues in Washington, Oregon and California, as well as England, Scotland, France and Kyrgyzstan. He wrote his first memoir, Wolfer, in 2010. His second memoir, Wolf Land was published in 2016.
Since retirement from federal service he has worked as a private contractor conducting training workshops for federal, state, county, and tribal agencies, as well as academic institutions. He focuses his workshops on wolf capture methodology, livestock damage assessments related to predation and non-lethal ways of reducing livestock damage by large predators. He also assists veterinary staff with wolf handling and chemical immobilization training workshops.
Dr. Ripple, Professor of Forest Ecosystems at Oregon State University, is a leader in pioneering research on predator, prey and plant relationships. His studies of trophic cascades present a groundbreaking view of the significant interdependence of large predators and the ecosystems in which they live. He has published 75 scientific journal articles, of which 35 are on the topic of large predators and trophic cascades.
Leading a team of collaborators, Dr. Ripple conducted innovative studies of the relationship between aspen growth in Yellowstone National Park and the absence and later reintroduction of wolves to the landscape. Subsequent studies have examined the effects of wolves and cougars in Jasper, Olympic, Wind Cave, Yosemite and Zion National Parks. This research is featured in National Geographic’s Strange Days on Planet Earth, and a documentary film, Lords of Nature: Living in a Land of Great Predators.
Dr. Ripple is continuing the work begun by Aldo Leopold on the intersection of forestry and wildlife science and ecosystems, particularly with regard to predators, ungulates and forests. Bill also serves as the Director of the Trophic Cascades Program, investigating the role of the gray wolf in the structuring of ecological communities. He received his Ph.D. from Oregon State University, his master’s degree from the University of Idaho, and his undergraduate degree from South Dakota State University.
Adrian Treves earned his PhD at Harvard University in 1997 and is now an associate professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on ecology, law, the public trust, and agroecosystems where crop and livestock production overlap carnivore habitat. He and his students work to understand and manage the balance between human needs and carnivore conservation. Please visit his website for interactive maps, videos, and a full list of scientific publications.
Mr. Bishop worked 36 years for the National Park Service, from 1980 to 1997 in Yellowstone National Park, and previously in Rocky Mountain, Death Valley, Yosemite and Mount Rainier National Parks, and in the Southeast Regional Office. He retired in 1997 and lives in Bozeman, Montana.
From 1985 to 1997, Norm led and supported wolf restoration interpretation in Yellowstone. He was a reviewer of the 1990 and 1992 reports to Congress, “Wolves for Yellowstone?” and contributed to the 1994 Environmental Impact Statement, “The Reintroduction of Gray Wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho.”
Through 2005, he led several dozen seminars on Yellowstone wolves for the Yellowstone Association Institute, the Teton Science School and the International Wolf Center, where he is the Yellowstone region field representative. He is a board member of the Wolf Recovery Foundation, and of Wild Things Unlimited, and co-chair of the Gallatin-Park County Chapter of Montana Conservation Voters.
For his wolf education work, Mr. Bishop received the National Park and Conservation Association’s Stephen Mather Award, and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s Stewardship Award. Mr. Bishop graduated from the University of Denver with a degree in biology, then served four years as a naval aviator before returning to Colorado State University for graduate studies in forest recreation and wildlife management. He is the co-author of “Yellowstone’s Northern Range: Complexity and Change in a Wildland Ecosystem,” published by Yellowstone National Park.
Ms. St. Onge is the co-owner of the outfitting and guiding company Sun Valley Trekking, where she has worked with many local school groups, nonprofit organizations, and college and university outdoor programs, providing wolf ecology education and outreach since 2001.
Ms. St. Onge grew up cross-country skiing and canoeing in the lake country of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, where wolves were always part of her environment. In 1999, Francie spent the summer working as a naturalist and guide in Alaska’s Denali National Park. In addition to giving lectures and presentations on wolf ecology and predator-predator interactions, she took advantage of the opportunity to assist Dr. Gordon Haber in his research on wolf behavior, observing wolves at their dens in their natural environment.
She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in forestry and resource conservation, with a minor in wilderness studies at the University of Montana. Since that time, she has guided wilderness expeditions throughout the Intermountain West and Alaska, and co-founded a winter environmental education program in Crested Butte, Colorado. She completed her master’s degree in recreation resources and environmental education at Utah State University in 2001.
In 2009, Francie started the first wolf ecology program based in Sun Valley, offering programming focused on viewing wolves in the surrounding region on skis or snowshoes. Sun Valley Trekking activities center on natural history and wildlife, in collaboration with local land owners, biologists, ranchers, conservation groups and the general public.
Ms. St. Onge runs the office operations for Sun Valley Trekking while guiding, training for cross-country ski marathons and raising her daughter.
Mr. Pomeroy was born on a 10,000-acre cattle, sheep and rice ranch in Williams, California, northwest of Sacramento, where he learned to hunt deer, pheasant, duck, dove and quail from the time he was five years old.
Charlie moved to Bainbridge Island in the Pacific Northwest when he was 13, and became immersed in the marine environment. He attended numerous colleges in the state of Washington, majoring in Native American studies.
He started working on tugboats out of Seattle, supplying logging equipment, Alaskan pipeline materials and mining supplies to the small towns and villages from southeastern Alaska to the Aleutian Islands. At 24, Mr. Pomeroy became the youngest licensed tugboat captain in Alaska. He purchased a home in Ketchum, Idaho in 1972, and commuted between there and Alaska for 12 years.
In 1981, Charlie started a small construction company in Ketchum, and continues to operate it today. In 1996, he returned to Alaska to commercially fish for sockeye salmon, spending summers in the Bering Sea for ten years.
Appreciation for wildlife, hunting, fishing and environmental conservation are C.W.’s major interests. Since the 1970s, he has observed the behavior of brown bears and wolves during the Alaskan summers. When in Idaho, he carefully follows elk and deer migrations in wolf habitat. Charlie has been a bow and rifle hunter for elk, deer and antelope for more than 50 years, as well as an avid waterfowl and upland bird hunter.
Mr. Pomeroy has been actively involved in the Idaho Conservation League and the Snake River Alliance for many years.
Dr. Varley is the owner of The Wild Side, LLC, a wildlife touring business specializing in outfitting groups of all ages to view wolves and other wildlife in Yellowstone National Park, including interpretation related to the park’s natural and cultural history and sciences. He and his wife, Linda Thurston, lead tours that champion a land ethic that places the highest value on wildlife and habitat within the Yellowstone ecosystem, focusing on forever preserving and enjoying the places that have provided Nathan’s life inspiration.
Dr. Varley grew up in Yellowstone National Park in the community of Mammoth Hot Springs, where his parents have lived and worked as biologists and park rangers for three decades. Following in their footsteps, Nathan studied biology at Montana State University, where he earned both his M.S. and undergraduate degrees in fisheries and wildlife management from the Department of Biology, conducting research on the ecology of mountain goats in the Absaroka Mountains on Yellowstone’s eastern boundary. Nathan earned his Ph.D. in ecology from the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Alberta. His research there focused on the relationship between wolves and elk after wolf reintroduction, including radio tracking of elk from the ground and air, and the supervision and training of technicians in the assessment of carcasses for cause of death, age, condition and other data.
As a contributor to the historic Gray Wolf Recovery Project in Yellowstone Park, Nathan served under Supervisor Doug Smith from 1995 to 2005, working on studies that included tracking, from radio telemetry and ground observation; observing gray wolf interactions with ungulate species; field necropsy; data collection; capture and handling.
Dr. Varley has served as an assistant producer for wildlife films from National Geographic and other organizations, and has appeared as a naturalist for media assignments from Nature, Time, ESPN2, National Geographic and the BBC, among others.
Additional wildlife studies led him to research moose in Alaska, guanacos in Patagonia, and pine marten in Idaho. Yellowstone’s coyotes, bears, river otters and gray wolves have also been primary study subjects. Nathan is currently a Wilderness First Responder and has also worked as a firefighter in Yellowstone National Park.
Mr. Clevidence is a member of a pioneer Montana ranching family in the Bitterroot Valley. Living and working on the ranch, he spent a large portion of his life in the mountains and wilderness of western Montana, interacting with the wildlife and habitat that remain his greatest interest.
Steve studied at the University of Montana and worked summers as a U.S. Forest Service Habitat Typer in the Forestry Department. He went on to graduate from the Coastal School of Deep Sea Diving in Oakland, California, specializing in work for the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico until an industrial accident brought him back to Montana. The family cattle business and animals, domestic and wild, have always been his first love. Now retired from ranching and public service, he has studied and encouraged conservation-minded practices in the family business throughout his life. While the family operation is presently leased to another rancher, it continues, with Steve’s involvement, as it was when his family operated it.
Mr. Clevidence served for 13 years in Montana as a Sheriff’s Department Dive Rescue Specialist. During his career, he was decorated with the Montana Medal of Valor, and the American Police Hall of Fame’s Silver Star and Life Saving medals.
He feels that the strong values and ethics his ranching and outdoorsman family taught him growing up will help him to work with other ranchers, conservationists and sportsmen to find workable solutions for human and wildlife interactions.
Mr. Engelhart has been running cattle his entire life, caring for both yearlings and cow/calf pairs. He was born in British Columbia, and was raised on a cow/calf operation south of Houston, B.C. Unlike ranchers in the western United States, where wolves have made a relatively recent recovery, Canadian ranchers have been dealing with the presence of wolf packs for a long time.
Joe has lived in Alberta for the past 18 years, 11 of them managing a ranching cooperative on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. The livestock summer in high mountain country and winter on lower rangeland, grazing in areas where wolf packs also live.
Interested in learning and exploring new ways of living in harmony with wolves and other large carnivores while grazing cattle, Joe has attended seminars hosted by Defenders of Wildlife. He has also worked closely with biologists Charles Mano and Timm Kaminski on collaring and monitoring three wolf packs in the area of his operation.
Mr. Engelhart is eager to share techniques used on both sides of the border to limit the conflict caused by the interaction of wolves and livestock.
Mr. Kaminski is a wildlife and conservation biologist who is the principal investigator for the nonprofit Mountain Livestock Cooperative. He is also a research associate with the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative in Jackson, Wyoming and with the Craighead Environmental Research Institute in Bozeman, Montana.
As a field biologist operating in the Rocky Mountain region, he has long been involved in conservation issues, especially those involving carnivores and endangered species. Timm’s work is based on his belief that conservation will increasingly challenge wildlife and conservation professionals to make science more meaningful to the lives of people with divergent backgrounds and values.
The focus of the Mountain Livestock Cooperative’s on-the-ground work involves managing livestock availability and vulnerability to large carnivores, and merging ranchers’ knowledge about livestock, their land and surroundings with a scientific understanding of carnivore behavior and ecology. Timm works with ranchers involved in this effort in the mountains of southern Alberta, southwest Montana, northwest Wyoming, eastern Oregon and east-central Idaho.
Mr. Kaminski has worked for state, federal, provincial and non-government organizations for more than 30 years, participating in research and management efforts involving mule deer, elk, black-footed ferret, northern spotted owl, gray wolf, bald eagle, Canada lynx and grizzly bear conservation efforts spanning the Yellowstone region, the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. and Canada, the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region.
Timm was principal staff and legislative assistant to Congressman Wayne Owens (D-Utah) in Washington, D.C., responsible for legislation to restore wolves to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. Mr. Kaminski also served as a U.S. Forest Service National Wildlife and Fish Program Leader on three national forests in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and served as Wolf Project Leader for Idaho and Western Montana under contract between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nez Perce Tribe. Mr. Kaminski holds a M.S. degree in Cooperative Wildlife Research from the University of Montana, Missoula, and a B.S. degree from the University of Wyoming, Laramie.
Dr. Kunkel has led a nonprofit organization, the Conservation Science Collaborative, for more than eight years, working to develop and employ science to lead conservation practices while focusing on critical needs. He currently leads long-term research on wolves and wolverines in the trans-boundary Flathead country of Montana and British Columbia, yielding conservation recommendations that are partly responsible for permanent protections in what could be considered the most important basin for carnivores in the Rocky Mountains.
Since 2003, Kyran has served as a Senior Fellow and consultant with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) where he is a principal member of a team engaged in the largest ongoing land and species conservation and restoration effort in North America, the American Prairie Reserve. He developed and served as co-leader of the Bison Conservation and Restoration Project; led the Cougar Conservation Project, the only large carnivore conservation/research project in the United States Great Plains; and the Pronghorn Antelope Conservation Project, the largest corridor connectivity assessment ever conducted in the contiguous states, involving 100 GPS-collared pronghorn on more than 10-million acres. The WWF Northern Great Plains programs constitute the largest conservation science program in the eco-region.
He is also an Affiliate Professor in the Wildlife Biology Program at the University of Montana. Dr. Kunkel completed his Ph.D. at the University of Montana, conducting research in Glacier National Park and British Columbia, the first comprehensive research project on wolves and their prey in the western U.S. He received his undergraduate degree from South Dakota State University, and his master’s degree in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Minnesota, studying wolves and deer in northern Minnesota under Dr. David Mech.
Previously, Kyran worked as the regional wildlife biologist for the Alaska Region of the National Park Service from 1997 to 1999, where he studied moose, wolverines, and grizzly and black bears. He was also a Senior Biologist for the Turner Endangered Species Fund, where he led the largest and most successful bighorn sheep restoration project ever completed in New Mexico. He was also part of the team that established new populations of imperiled swift foxes in South Dakota and Montana.
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