How long have you been with Defenders?

“I just completed my 30th year. Prior to joining Defenders, I worked in the natural resource management and outdoor adventure/recreation fields. In 1992 I left a job conducting forest inventories to volunteer for Defender’s wolf restoration campaign in Yellowstone, and I was later hired to help lead a Mexican gray wolf recovery effort in the Southwest.”

How did you get your start in conservation?

“I grew up along a creek in Nebraska. My mother tried to steer me away by telling me there were alligators in the creek. Of course I immediately began exploring for them, but all I found were raccoons and muskrats, which I found fascinating. This motivated me to learn more about wildlife of the area including the beavers, river otters and even gray wolves that used to live there. I was troubled by how much forest had been cut down and plowed into farmland and converted to residential subdivisions. This really hit home when I realized the trees that once held-up my forts were gone and the creek had become a giant culvert. 

I became involved in various camping and ecology-focused groups, worked at Nature camps and outdoor recreation jobs, and I joined the Audubon Expedition Institute to deepen my understanding of human-nature relationships. It was during a backpacking trip in southeast Arizona that I learned about Defenders of Wildlife, which owned Aravaipa Canyon at the north end of the range we were hiking, to protect area wildlife from the extreme anti-predator sentiment that dominated the region. Aravaipa was one of the last places in the U.S. where highly endangered Mexican gray wolves had been reported. 

I later visited a captive management facility working to prevent the extinction of these highly endangered wolves. The had been completely eradicated from the wild, and at the time there were just a few dozen being raised in a couple of breeding facilities. 

After the Audubon Expedition, I moved to Arizona and began working at REI to support my conservation habit. I met a woman through the Sierra Club and Arizona Wilderness Coalition who was starting a new conservation group, Preserve Arizona’s Wolves, to build support for wolf restoration. I enthusiastically joined the effort. I was very fortunate that this role afforded me the opportunity to explore vast Southwest wilderness areas, conduct howling surveys, assist with reintroduction site feasibility studies and to meet with a diversity of agency managers, ranchers, sportsmen and eventually Defender’s president and board as part of broader discussions about wolf recovery and conservation.”

What highlights stand out to you in your work to protect wildlife?

“One highlight is simply the satisfaction in knowing that we’ve helped make a substantial change for the future, both in the protection of a critically endangered and highly controversial species and in the nature of relationships between people and communities with vastly different values. 

Our work on livestock loss compensation, conflict-prevention and coexistence has helped open-up new ways of working together with ranchers and farmers that can help us achieve greater conservation gains for a broad diversity of wildlife and habitats. It’s especially rewarding to see state and federal agencies beginning to take the lead on proactive conflict prevention.”

What would you like people to know about Mexican gray wolves?

“Mexican gray wolf recovery is widely recognized as one of the most complicated, challenging and highly charged wildlife management programs anywhere. Yet, despite the extreme dynamics we have been able to help a small and critically endangered population of wolves find their way back to the wild lands of the Southwest. 

While today’s population of 241 wild lobos (up from the 11 that were reintroduced into the wild 25 years ago) is cause for celebration, much important work remains. Significant challenges include limited genetic diversity due to the low number of original founder wolves, high-levels of illegal killing and management removals to protect livestock and politically-drawn boundaries that prevent wolf dispersal and the establishment of a metapopulation, which science indicates is essential for recovery. 

The concept of recovery itself must also evolve within the agencies responsible for managing our land and wildlife. Recovery must be accepted as more than a just symbolic reinstatement of a small, isolated and intensively managed population based on minimally viable numbers. Wild wolves are fascinating and vitally important; their recovery should be based on the resumption and maintenance of key ecological processes and the myriad of system-wide benefits that science says can accompany their return. It is as much about what the wolves can bring back to the land as what habitat the land can provide the wolves.
     
When I’m out in wolf country following fresh tracks or savoring the sweet sound of an evening howl – after deeply appreciating the experience in the moment – the realization that we can make a difference gives me hope. What I want people to know is that the loss of wildlife and wild places is almost always the result of human decisions, and we all have the ability to get involved and change the outcomes for the better.”

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