The Rewilding Institute distinguishes itself among conservation organizations through its Fellow Program, which brings together leading thinkers and strategists to advance the approach of continental-scale conservation in North America. These Fellows include both scientists and conservationists. Fellows are not employees of TRI, but come from a variety of organizations, institutions, and agencies to join together as the cauldron for new conservation ideas.

Science Fellows are prominent conservation scientists in several fields, who are experienced in developing the ideas and theories of continental conservation, and who are experts in on-the-ground carnivore recovery and other ecological restoration. Conservation Fellows are experienced and knowledgeable leaders of the citizen conservation movement, who are dedicated to integrating The Rewilding Institute approach into mainstream conservation groups, advising TRI on strategies to make continental conservation practical, and developing priorities to integrate continental-scale conservation into policy.

Science and Conservation Fellows will work together and will be invited to workshops on key issues and ideas. TRI has already organized one Working Group of Fellows to develop ecological guidelines for selection and design of Wilderness Areas and a strategy for bring such guidelines to wilderness protection groups and agencies. This EcoWild Working Group had an initial meeting in Albuquerque this summer.

Fellows Soulè, Foreman, Parsons, Miller, McKnight, and Humphrey met with John Terborgh and other TRI supporters during a 10-day Green River float trip this summer. Working groups and meetings for other key topics are being planned.

Some of the Fellows are available for speaking engagements. Click Here to inquire about speaking engagements in your area. This website will also link to key articles by Fellows, and offer books by Fellows. As they are added, new Fellows will be listed here.

TRI Science Fellows

Michael E. Soulé
Senior Science Fellow

Michael Soulé is Professor Emeritus in Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz.  He was born, raised, and mostly educated in California.  After spending much of his youth in the canyons, deserts, and intertidal of San Diego, and after graduating from San Diego State, he went to Stanford to study population biology and evolution under Paul Ehrlich.  Upon receiving his Ph.D. at Stanford, Michael went to Africa to help found the first university in Malawi. 

He has also taught in Samoa, the Universities of California (San Diego and Santa Cruz—where he was chair of Environmental Studies), and Michigan.  He has done field work on lizards, birds, and mammals in Africa, Mexico, the Adriatic, the West Indies, and California, and Colorado.

Michael was a founder of the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Project and has been the president of both.  He has written and edited 9 books on biology, conservation biology, and the social context of contemporary conservation.  He has published more than 150 articles on various subjects including population and evolutionary biology, population genetics, island biogeography, environmental studies, biodiversity policy, nature conservation, and ethics, and continues to do research on the genetic basis of fitness and viability in natural populations, on the impacts of “keystone” species, and on the causes of the destruction of nature worldwide. 

He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, is the sixth recipient of the Archie Carr Medal, was named by Audubon Magazine in 1998 as one of the 100 Champions of Conservation of the 20th Century, and is a recipient of the National Wildlife Federation’s 2001 National Conservation Achievement Award.

Now living in Colorado, Michael restores wildlife habitat, serves on the boards of several conservation organizations, and consults internationally on nature protection.  Currently, he is writing a book about diversity, self-realization, and compassion for all life.

Click Here to see Michael's Published Work...

Jim Catlin
Wild Utah Project

Dave Maehr
University of Kentucky

David S. Maehr was born in Fairbanks, Alaska but was raised in the Midwest where he spent many hours in the remnant wilds of southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky.  He has a B.S. in Wildlife Management from The Ohio State University and an M.S. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Florida. 

Dave received his Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation while working with Larry Harris at the University of Florida. He is currently associate professor of conservation biology in the Department of Forestry, University of Kentucky, where he examines the ecology, conservation, and restoration of large mammals and other imperiled vertebrates.

His current research examines a naturally colonizing bear population in eastern Kentucky, reintroduced elk, and conservation of small black bear populations in Florida. From 1985 to 1994 he supervised Florida panther and black bear field research on these listed species. His work has been instrumental in targeting key conservation lands that will provide habitat and movement linkages for wide-ranging carnivores.  Dave has authored over 120 articles on various topics including bird ecology, carnivore conservation and ecology, eastern elk restoration, conservation teaching, professionalism, and conservation planning. 

He has also written or edited 3 books.  Dave is currently an Aldo Leopold Leadership Program fellow, Ocelot Recovery Team co-leader for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, is chair of The Wildlife Society’s Certification Review Board, a member of the Border Cats Working Group, and is on the Eastern Cougar Foundation’s board of directors.

Click Here to see Dave's Published Work...

Margo McKnight
Executive Director, The Wildlands Project

Brian Miller
Denver Zoo

Brian received a Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming in behavioral ecology and conservation of black-footed ferrets and then was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Conservation and Research Center of the National Zoological Park. 

From 1992 to 1997, Brian lived and worked in Mexico as a professor at the National University of Mexico.  At that time, he worked on starting a protected area on the high plains of Chihuahua, Mexico and then began an ongoing research project on jaguars and pumas in the dry tropical forest of Jalisco, Mexico. 

Currently, Brian works as a conservation biologist for the Denver Zoological Foundation where he is examining the impacts of wolf reintroduction on the mammal community in Grand Teton National Park (in Wyoming).  His main research interest concerns the role of top carnivores in regulating ecosystem processes, and how to improve protection for carnivores when designing reserves.  He is the lead author of the Southern Rockies Wildlands Network Vision and coauthor of Prairie Night.

David Parsons
Former head of Mexican wolf recovery team

David Parsons is a professional wildlife biologist.  He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology from Iowa State University and his Master of Science degree in Wildlife Ecology from Oregon State University.  Dave is retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after 25 years with that agency.

From 1990-1999, he led the USFWS’s effort to reintroduce the endangered Mexican gray wolf to portions of its former range in Arizona and New Mexico.  In 2000, he was recognized by the International Wolf Center for his wolf conservation efforts, and in 2001 was a recipient of the New Mexico Chapter of The Wildlife Society’s annual “Professional Award.”  Dave’s interests include the ecology and conservation of large carnivores, ecological restoration, protection and conservation of biodiversity, and wildlands conservation at scales that fully support ecological and evolutionary processes. 

He is a steering committee member of the Southern Rockies Wolf Restoration Project; a member of the Southwest Gray Wolf Recovery Team; a graduate advisor in the Environmental Studies Master of Arts Program at Prescott College, Arizona; a science advisor to the Heritage Ranch Institute—a conservation ranching initiative in New Mexico; a former member of the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance; and the sole proprietor of Parsons Biological Consulting—which provides technical services, information, and policy advice on matters relating to wildlife biology, wildlife ecology, wildlife conservation, and wildlands conservation to conservation-minded clients.  Dave lives with his wife, Noralyn, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Paul Paquet
Canadian wolf biologist

Don Waller
University of Wisconsin

Don Waller, Professor of Botany and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, teaches courses in ecology, evolution, field biology, and conservation biology. His research interests include historical changes in plant communities, impacts of habitat fragmentation and deer browsing on plant communities, and the demography and genetics of plant populations.  He has worked in forests in Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Jalisco, Mexico, and Panama. 

He has also worked extensively with state and federal resource agencies to improve forest and game management by linking these with conservation biology.  This work earned several conservation awards and resulted in a book:  Wild Forests:  Conservation Biology and Public Policy (Island Press 1994) co-authored with botanist Bil Alverson and attorney Walter Kuhlmann.  Dr. Waller served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Evolution from 1999-2003 and is currently an Associate Editor for Ecology Letters. Experiences with overabundant deer led to his recent interest in bow hunting where his skills remain mediocre.

Tom Rooney

Tom Rooney hails from southeastern Pennsylvania, and spent countless  days exploring the Appalachian Mountains and the Wisconsin Northwoods. He has a B.A. in Biology from The University of Delaware, and an M.S. in Biology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Tom completed his Ph.D. in Botany while working with fellow Science Fellow Don Waller at the University of Wisconsin. He was elected to Sigma Xi, an honor society of scientists and engineers, and was named an EPA STAR Fellow. He is currently an assistant scientist in the Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin, where he investigates the nature, extent, and causes of change in forest plant communities over half century, and uncovers patterns and correlates of biotic impoverishment through time.

Tom is a population and community ecologist best known for his work on how deer influence the structure and dynamics of forest ecosystems. His research interests are diverse, and he has addressed a number of ecological processes including: how developmental constraints and climate change might influence future insect population distributions, trophic cascades generated by predators in terrestrial systems, pollination and reproductive biology of summer wildflowers, and the assessment of conservation value using geospatial and floristic data. He has authored and co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed papers.

Allison Jones

Allison Jones received her B.A in Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz under the guidance of her mentor and advisor, Michael Soule. She then completed her M.S in Conservation Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno in 1996. Her Masters study analyzed the effects of cattle grazing on small mammal communities in the Great Basin.

Allison then went on to work as an endangered species specialist for ecological consulting firms in Denver, and then her new home in Utah, where she completed habitat analyses and surveys for endangered plants, birds and mammals, as well as wetland delineations. Allison is now working as the staff conservation biologist for the Wild Utah Project (The Wildlands Project affiliate for Utah, and also provider of GIS services to Utah's conservation community).

In addition to collecting and assembling biological data to be used in reserve design for the Colorado Plateau and other parts of Utah, Allison also provides biological analyses for Utah conservation groups that do not typically have these services in-house. These include things such as literature reviews, status reviews of rare species, and ecological analyses of various federal land management plans and other actions. Allison is currently the Principle Investigator on two different grazing research projects in southern Utah.

TRI Conservation Fellows

Dave Foreman
TRI Director, Senior Conservation Fellow, and Board President

Dave Foreman has worked as a wilderness conservationist since 1971.  From 1973 to 1980, he worked for The Wilderness Society as Southwest Regional Representative in New Mexico and as Director of Wilderness Affairs in Washington, DC. 

He was a member of the board of trustees for the New Mexico Chapter of The Nature Conservancy from 1976 to 1980.  From 1982 to 1988, he was editor of the Earth First! Journal.  Foreman is a founder of the Wildlands Project and was its Chairman from 1991-2003 and executive editor or publisher of Wild Earth from 1991-2003.  He is now the Director and Senior Fellow of The Rewilding Institute, a conservation “think tank” advancing ideas of continental conservation. 

He was a member of the national Board of Directors of the Sierra Club from 1995 to 1997 and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.  He speaks widely on conservation issues and is author of The Lobo Outback Funeral Home (a novel), Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, The Big Outside (with Howie Wolke), and Rewilding North America.  Foreman is the lead author and network designer of the Sky Islands Wildlands Network Conservation Plan and the New Mexico Highlands Wildlands Network Vision from the Wildlands Project. 

Foreman received the 1996 Paul Petzoldt Award for Excellence in Wilderness Education and was named by Audubon Magazine in 1998 as one of the 100 Champions of Conservation of the 20th Century.  Foreman is a backpacker, river runner, canoeist, fly-fisher, hunter, wilderness photographer, and bird-watcher.  He lives in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

To inquire about arranging a lecture by Dave Foreman, please contact us.

Kim Crumbo
NPS Ret., Arizona Wilderness Coalition

Kim is currently the Northern Representative for the Arizona Wilderness Coalition and Wilderness Coordinator for the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council. He is coordinating the conservationist's wilderness recommendation, including a regional wildlands network design, for the northern Arizona wilderness campaign.

Kim served as the river ranger, resource management specialist and Wilderness Coordinator for Grand Canyon National Park from 1980 to 1999.  As Wilderness Coordinator for the park, he provided guidance for NPS wilderness preservation and management in the park and in park documents. He also worked to rehabilitate or mitigate ground surface disturbance within the Grand Canyon National Park proposed wilderness, including the river corridor. He coordinated the wilderness volunteer program, contributed to NEPA compliance reviews, and assisted in exotic species inventory and removal. As former board president of the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, his extensive understanding of ecosystem conservation, including wildlands network design (WND), the precautionary approach, and applied principles of conservation biology have significantly contributed to the development and implementation of a Grand Canyon Ecoregion WND.

Kim also worked as a professional river guide and as Wilderness Coordinator for the Sierra Club in Utah. Before his work on rivers and wilderness, he spent four years with the Navy’s SEAL Team One completing two combat deployments to Vietnam. Kim received a B.S. in Environmental Studies from Utah State University, with postgraduate work in outdoor recreation. His publications include A River Runners Guide to the History of Grand Canyon, a chapter in Grand Canyon: Intimate Views, an article in the International Journal of Wilderness titled Wilderness Management at Grand Canyon: Waiting For Godot?, and an article about the ecological impacts of roads in Wild Earth magazine.

Monique DiGiorgio
Executive Director of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project

Monique earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Notre Dame and has been working for 10 years in the field of conservation biology and ecology.  For the first six years of her career, Monique worked as a field biologist  with a focus in ornithology. She spent much of her time nest searching and conducting behavioral observations, which took her from New South Wales, Australia studying the satin bowerbird, to San Diego, California studying the rufous-crowned sparrow, as well as many other places in between.

This work has allowed her to cultivate relationships with agencies, universities and non-profits and has given her a breadth of experience in ecology and non-profit dynamics. More recently, Monique has been working in non-profit management and development with conservation groups such as Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers, Menomonee Valley Partners, and the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, where she brings experience in fundraising, program development, capacity building, and relationship building.

Currently, Monique is the executive director of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project (SREP) and is spearheading the implementation of the "Southern Rockies Wildlands Network Vision".  She was instrumental in forging new and unique relationships with the Federal Highway Administration and the Colorado Department of Transportation to discuss the impacts that roads have on wildlife populations and landscape permeability.  Under her supervision, SREP is identifying and prioritizing the most critical wildlife corridors in the state of Colorado and will be making site-specific recommendations on where highway mitigation measures such as overpasses and underpasses should be placed.

John Davis
Wild Earth founding editor
 

John Davis has been active in the wilderness and wildlife protection movement since college, two decades ago.  For most of that period, he has worked closely with Dave Foreman.

John served as editor of the Earth First! Journal from 1986 to 1989.  In 1990, John co-founded Wild Earth magazine with Dave and with Reed Noss, David Johns, and Mary Byrd Davis.  John served as editor of Wild Earth from 1991 to 1997, when his life-long friend Tom Butler assumed editorship so that John could go to California and serve as Biodiversity & Wildness program officer of the Foundation for Deep Ecology.  John left that position in 2002 to focus much of his time on protecting a wildlife corridor -- now called Split Rock Wildway -- linking the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York with the Champlain Valley to the east.

John now serves as land steward for the Eddy Foundation's conservation land holdings in Split Rock Wildway and strives to serve as a scout and ranger for other wildlands westward, as well.  He also continues to edit various environmental publications.  John serves on the boards of  the Wildlands Project, RESTORE: The North Woods, the Conservation Land Trust, and several other conservation groups.  He lives with his two cats, Taiga and Ptarmigan, in a cabin on a Beaver pond in the eastern Adirondacks.

Susan Morgan
Forest Guardians

Susan Morgan, PhD, resides in Albuquerque and serves as Communications Director for Forest Guardians where she coordinates print publications and electronic outreach. She has been with Forest Guardians since 2001. Susan holds degrees in English and environmental studies, with emphasis on wildlands conservation. She received the graduate award for her doctoral study on the history of conservation advocacy and conservation biology in the United States and how these two shaped The Wildlands Project.

Susan has taught high school English and environmental studies at the community college level. In 1968 she began as Director of Education for the Wilderness Society and has subsequently worked in wilderness, wildlands, and public lands conservation for thirty-six years. She is currently a conservation fellow with The Rewilding Institute.

Dr. Robert Howard
Former Wildlands Project Board President

Dr. Robert E. "Bob" Howard is a retired Pathologist and Medical School professor, management and computing consultant, and longtime volunteer conservation activist.  For over three decades, Bob has worked for wilderness protection and in other areas of conservation including clean air, clean water and water source protection, solar energy and energy efficiency, recycling, international, Alaska, Superfund, and other conservation campaigns, and many state and local campaigns. 

He also has done state and federal level lobbying, and been involved with all aspects of political process.  He has held senior executive positions with several for-profit and non-profit corporations.  During the 1970s and 1980s he was an organizer and Director of the New Mexico Wilderness Study Committee, and Chairperson of the Sierra Club's Rio Grande Chapter.  At the national level of the Sierra Club, he was a Director, Vice President, and Treasurer.  More recently, he has been cofounder and Chairperson of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and President of the Wildlands Project, and is still a Director of both.

Dr. Howard's strengths are in organization, management, planning, and training.  He is an experienced professional consultant with broad background as physician, scientist, manager, and computing specialist.  He is knowledgeable about business systems and computing, and is a skilled speaker and teacher, meeting leader, systems analyst, planner, and problem solver.  His consulting services included top-level management assistance with planning and adaptation to change, analysis of opportunities, and quality assurance.    

For several organizations he has helped develop successful grant proposals, much of the administrative infrastructure, and pushed for a broad philosophy and program.  Having lived and worked in all parts of the United States, he has "on-the-ground" familiarity with diverse conservation situations, and his understanding bridges both the science and conservation arenas. 

Bob is a major coauthor of the Sky Islands Wildlands Network Conservation Plan, the New Mexico Highlands Wildlands Network Vision, and the Southern Rockies Wildlands Network Vision.  He contributed particularly to development of the "Wounds to the Land" framing of ecological damage, to the "Healing the Wounds" approach to ecological restoration, and to the concepts and details of wildlands network plan implementation through conservation action.

Craig Miller
Defenders of Wildlife

Brian O’Donnell
Wilderness Support Center

As the executive director for the Alaska Wilderness League, Brian was instrumental in efforts to block oil companies from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He successfully led AWL's efforts to defend Alaska's wilderness from numerous legislative anti-environmental attacks. 

Brian was a lead organizer for the first Wilderness Mentoring Conference in May 1998.  Together with Melyssa Watson, and Bart Koehler, Brian started the Wilderness Support Center in late 1998; he is associate director.   Brian was a co-founder of the Nevada Wilderness Coalition and the West Virginia Wilderness Coalition. 

In 2000, Brian helped lead the successful effort to protect Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and High Rock Canyon region as wilderness.  Brian recently helped secure congressional protection for more than 450,000 acres of wilderness in southern Nevada.  He currently works on wilderness campaigns throughout the country including the Nevada wilderness campaign and West Virginia wilderness campaign.

Max Oelschlaeger
Northern Arizona University

Max is the McAllister Endowed Chair in Community, Culture, and Environment at Northern Arizona University. His work engages the messy interface between cultural and natural systems using an interdisciplinary approach. His recent teaching has been in the areas of ecological restoration and also the past, present and future of the greater Grand Canyon bioregion.

Recent books include The Idea of Wilderness (Yale UP), Caring for Creation (Yale UP), and Texas Land Ethics (Texas UP) with Pete A. Y. Gunter. Recent articles have appeared in Natural Resources Journal, Future, and Sign System Studies. Max is a board member of Arizona Humanities Council, the Museum of Northern Arizona (where he served as Acting Director for six months), the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, and Environmental Ethics, Inc. Max and spouse Mary increasingly split time between Flagstaff, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Matt Clark

Matt is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he  grew up against the foothills of the Sandia Mountain Wilderness.  Matt received a B.S. in Environmental Sciences and a minor in Leadership Studies from Denver University in 1994.  

Matt has worked in various capacities for organizations such as the Sky Island Alliance (SIA), the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance  (NMWA) , The Wildlands Project and the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council. 

Matt played an important role in the NM Statewide BLM Wilderness Inventory conducted by NMWA, in which he worked to integrate ecological principles for protected area design into proposed wilderness area boundary selection, and coordinated the development of detailed comments for the National Forest Roadless Area Policy.  With SIA, he conducted research for the Sky Islands Wildlands Network. He went on to be coordinator and co-author of the New Mexico Highlands Wildlands Network and Conservation Vision, and is currently performing a similar role to develop the Grand Canyon Wildlands Network and Conservation Vision.  

He spent the summer of 2003 as a Eugene-Polk Fellow with the Grand Canyon National Park Foundation on the North Rim, where he conducted field research on carnivore community assembly.  Most recently, Matt earned a Graduate Certificate in Conservation Ecology from Northern Arizona University. 

His interests include: preservation of wilderness, conservation biology and wildlands network design, addressing barriers to wildlife movement, predator conservation and top down regulation of ecosystems, restoration ecology, and the socio-political factors that influence wildlands and wildlife management. Matt specializes in collaborative initiatives that work to achieve common goals of conservation, restoration and sustainability.

Jack Humphrey
Tale Chaser Publishing, Former Director of Sky Island Alliance

Jack was the grass roots coordinator and fundraiser for the Sky Island Wildlands Network design project.  After working "in the trenches" as a professional non-profit organizer, activist, trainer, and director for several organizations over an 11-year span, Jack struck out on his own and started Tale Chaser Publishing, Inc.

From his work on the ground in the Sky Islands of New Mexico, Arizona, and Northern Mexico, Jack understands all too well the urgency and gravity of our current ecological crisis as outlined in Dave Foreman's 'Rewilding North America.'

Although Jack's professional focus is building a successful online publishing company and as a publicity consultant for several large and small web businesses, he has dedicated his extra time and resources to furthering the goals of The Rewilding Institute and making continental conservation a top-of-mind issue for conservationists and policy makers.

Jack's company handles this website.  All technical questions and problems should be directed to this address for a fast response.

News | Contact Us | Donate | Resources | Events | Mission | Vision
 Meet the Fellows | About TRI