Utah People

John Bissonette Unit Leader Email: john.bissonette@usu.edu Website: http://www.cnr.usu.edu/htm/facstaff/memberID=764 Tel: (435) 797 - 7565

John received a B.A. from the University of Vermont, a M.F.S. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He has been Leader of the Utah Unit since 1985.

Phaedra Budy Assistant Unit Leader Email: phaedra.budy@usu.edu Website: http://www.cnr.usu.edu/wats/htm/directory-plugin/memberIC=771 Tel: (435) 797 - 7564

Currently Dr. Budy is the Assistant Unit Leader at the USGS Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit where she serves as a Research Scientist. She is also a Professor in the Department of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University.

Thomas Edwards Assistant Unit Leader Email: t.edwards@nr.usu.edu Website: http://ella.gis.usu.edu/~utcoop/tce/ Tel: (435) 797 - 2529

He currently is a Research Scientist with the USGS Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Professor in the Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University.

Mary Conner Research Faculty Email: mary.conner@usu.edu

Currently Dr. Conner is a partial time Research Wildlife Biologist with the USDA Forest Service. She is also a Research Faculty with the Department of Watershed Sciences and Adjunct Faculty with Wildland Resource Sciences at Utah State.

Shauna Leavitt Administrative Assistant Email: shauna.lee.leavitt@usu.edu Tel: (435) 797 - 7565

Shauna earned her BS in Print Journalism at Utah State University in 2006.

Gary Thiede Fisheries Biologist Email: gary.thiede@usu.edu

After receiving his BS at UW-Madison and gaining valuable experience at the Center for Limnology, Gary was a research technician at the Aquatic Ecology Lab at The Ohio State University for two years. He then completed his MS thesis research with Dave Beauchamp (when Dave was still at USU) working with lake trout food-web dynamics in Lake Tahoe. He then worked a few years as a research associate in Todd Crowl’s ecology lab at USU before joining the Peace Corps, serving in Zambia, 1997 - 1999. From 2000 – 2001, Gary worked with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Portland, and then on Lake Billy Chinook. In 2001, he joined Phaedra Budy at the UT CFWRU at USU, and has been a research associate, lab manager, and fisheries biologist in her lab ever since. Gary has enjoyed work and research trips to other countries including Zambia, Spain, Pakistan, and New Zealand, and hopes to continue research in interesting locations worldwide.

Tracy Bowerman Email: tracybowerman@gmail.com

Tracy has a diverse background in science research and education. She has studied the effect of invasive insects on native insects and plants in Hawaii, amphibian limb deformities in Oregon, and the nesting success of macaws in the Peruvian Amazon. For her PhD research, she is conducting research on bull trout populations in Oregon, including evaluating factors that impact spawning success, movement, and survival at different life stages. Tracy also enjoys teaching, and has taught field courses in Environmental Studies and Adventure Education for the Sierra Institute (UC Santa Cruz extension) and Prescott College. In her free time, Tracy enjoys backcountry and Nordic skiing, whitewater kayaking, riding bikes, raising chickens, and growing as much of her own food as possible.

Adam Brewerton Email: a.brewerton@gmail.com

Adam has turned his life-long love of birds into a career. As a native of Utah, he has worked for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, where he has been a part of the non-game avian program. He works as both employee of the state and graduate student in the USGS Utah F&W Coop Unit. Before his current position he worked on the Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. His current position is monitoring songbird population recovery following Utah's largest wildfire. Like most that choose the outdoors as their office, he loves to ski, bike, hike and raft when he is not working from behind a pair of binoculars.

Amy Croft

Andy Dean

Jacob Gibson

While completing his bachelor’s degree at USU Jacob worked as a field technician for various research projects ranging from wildlife/vegetation surveys to sediment transport of rivers. The common thread became handling and producing maps for each project. In 2005 Jacob joined Dr. Thomas C. Edwards Biodiversity Lab as a GIS technician. He became Dr. Edwards graduate student in 2007 is completing his thesis work in species distribution models with an emphasis in climate change.

Nick Heredia Email: nheredia@aggiemail.usu.edu

Nick received his B.S. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011, where his main focus was in aquatic ecology. After spending two summers working at UW’s Trout Lake Station in Northern Wisconsin where he conducted an undergraduate thesis, on the effects of an invasive crayfish on fish growth, he decided to continue on with school and pursue a graduate degree. Nick joined Phaedra Budy’s lab in 2011 and is currently studying Lahontan cutthroat trout in Pyramid Lake, NV. He is enjoying living in the west as he likes to spend his free time fly fishing and rock climbing.

Stephen Klobucar Email: stephen.klobucar@gmail.com

Stephen received his B.S. in Zoology and Biological Aspects of Conservation, along with a certificate in Environmental Studies, from the University of Wisconsin in 2010. While at Wisconsin he worked on two separate NSF funded projects; 1) examining fish community responses to a dam removal and 2) investigating the early warning signs of an ecosystem regime shift. His current M.S. research is focused on quantifying the limitations of predatory fish growth across abiotic gradients of small impoundments in northeast Utah. He is using a large-scale manipulative experiment and various modeling techniques to approach his current research questions. While not in the field or the office, Stephen enjoys hunting, fishing, and anything else outdoors, as well as being a diehard Wisconsin Badger and Green Bay Packer fan.

Sam McKay Email: samuelmckay@utah.gov

Samuel graduated from the University of Montana in 2005 with a degree in Environmental Studies. Since then, he’s held a number of volunteer and paid positions on a diverse array of biological projects in the Western United States. Starting out by working as a technician on the Northern Continental Divide Grizzly Bear DNA Project in 2004 and then volunteering on a wolverine study with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Samuel soon found himself gravitating towards the western rivers he loves and working with the fish species found in these unique systems. He’s spent the last few years working as an aquatic biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources based out of Ogden, Utah. Samuel is very excited to begin working towards a master’s of science degree at Utah State University with Dr. Phaedra Budy, in the Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. In what little free time he has these days, Samuel enjoys—or dreams of-- fly fishing, skiing the famous Utah powder, and canyoneering in the slot canyons of the Colorado Plateau.

Christy Meredith Email: christymeredith@yahoo.com

Christy received a B. S. in Environmental Science and a M. S. degree in Water Science from Murray State University. Christy is working towards here PhD in Ecology in the Watershed Sciences program at Utah State University and plans to graduate in Fall 2011. Her research project is entitled “Factors influencing brown trout (Salmo trutta) invasion of a mountainous watershed.” While at USU, Christy has served as vice-president and president of the USU American Fisheries Society. In her spare time, Christy enjoys hiking, climbing, and bird watching.

Daniel Olson Email: dolson22@gmail.com

Daniel grew up in Idaho near the Salmon River. The beauty of the landscape and abundance of wildlife helped foster a deep interest in wildlife that led him to choose a career as an ecologist. During his career, he had the opportunity to study a sage grouse population that was brought back from the brink of extinction by supplementing the population with grouse from healthy populations. He also helped reintroduce bighorn sheep to an area of Utah that they were extirpated from over 100 years ago. In 2008, he joined the Utah Coop Unit to examine the effects of vehicle traffic on Utah’s most abundant large mammal, mule deer.

Nira Salant Email: nira@salant.org

Carl Saunders Email: carl.saunders@usu.edu

Carl has been a post-doctoral research scientist with the Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit since the fall of 2010 evaluating factors influencing the competitive interactions between native and exotic salmonids in western rivers. Carl came to Utah from Colorado where he completed his Pd.D. researching the influence of riparian grazing on terrestrial-aquatic linkages and stream food webs. Outside of the lab, and when not conducting field work, Carl and his wife and daughter enjoy fishing from their hand crafted wooden drift boat and hunting throughout the Rocky Mountains.

Timothy Walsworth Email: tewlsworth@gmail.com

Lisa Winters Email: lkwinter@indianu.edu