ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As a long-practicing registered professional biologist (RPBio) in British Columbia, I have had a wide range of experience in wildlife research, environmental impacts, cumulative effects analysis, and management/conservation issues in western Canada. I have headed numerous research projects, including on Chilcotin free-roaming horses, mammal inventory in Yoho National Park, grizzly bears, black bears, western toads, mountain goats, Roosevelt elk, spirit (Kermode) bears, and other species. I am well familiar with the ecology of the Alberta Foothills having mapped and studied grizzly bear habitat in Kananaskis Country for three years with Dr. Stephen Herrero, and for producing a report for Alberta Fish and Wildlife on the history of the grizzly bear in K-Country. In Alberta, I was also a waterfowl researcher on the first environmental impact study of the Athabasca Tar Sands (Syncrude), and a wildlife researcher on a gas pipeline from Chief Mountain Alberta to Trail, British Columbia.

I have conducted considerable ungulate research, including on barren-ground caribou, bighorn sheep, Roosevelt elk, and mountain goats. In 2015/2016, I carried out a professional review of feral horse management in Alberta.

Over the past 20 years, my research on wild horses in the BC Chilcotin has included field research on habitat use and response to wildfires, as well as genetic studies. I have also worked with the Xeni Gwet’in-Tsilhqot’in Nation on a wild horse management plan and guidelines for wildlife and wild horse tourism viewing. I recently published a book on my wild horse research titled The Wild Horses of the Chilcotin: Their History and Future, which won the 2024 Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for the best scholarly book by a Canadian author on a BC subject. It was given a starred review by the US Booklist for a work judged to be outstanding in its genre.

I have produced over 100 wildlife reports, including a number of publications in peer- reviewed journals. I have produced or co-authored three reports on Chilcotin wild horses and have been a co-author of two peer-reviewed scientific papers related to wild horses, one on the diet of Chilcotin wolves and the other on the spread of the domestic horse across the Americas, which won the prestigious 2024 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for outstanding contribution to science.

Cover Photo by Duane Star Photography