Gertschen Interview: Talking about conservation and education with Lance Craighead

Gertschen Interview: Talking about conservation and education with Lance Craighead

by | Aug 31, 2011 | Forest Education, Interviews with Educators & Leaders

lancebookInterview by Chris Gertschen

Lance Craighead is the Executive Director of the Craighead Institute, an applied science and research organization that builds conservation solutions for people and wildlife in changing landscapes. Its mission is to maintain healthy populations of native plants, wildlife, and people as part of sustainable, functioning ecosystems.

Since its founding by renowned grizzly bear researcher Dr. Frank C. Craighead in 1964, the Craighead Institute has pioneered the fields of conservation and wildlife research. Over the past four decades the Institute has conducted ecological research on grizzly bears in Yellowstone Park, genetic research on grizzly bears in Alaska, conventional and satellite radio-telemetry of wildlife, and the use of remote sensing to map vegetation and wildlife habitat. (more…)

Chris Gertschen talks with conservationists

Chris Gertschen talks with conservationists

by | Aug 10, 2011 | Forest Education

Gertschenpicby Chris Gertschen

For the past three decades, I have been an activist, a volunteer, a student and a teacher of conservation.  My activist years gave me an advocacy perspective but I quickly saw a great need to expand my own natural science education – to give some foundation and balance to my life and love of the earth.  My studies of biology as an undergrad were focused singularly on human biology and physiology.  The word “ecology” was not then part of the curriculum.  As a graduate student, I was introduced to a whole new world.  In the natural history interdisciplinary program that I designed for myself at Boise State University, I studied geology, zoology, ecology and public affairs.  And, I began to learn about conservation biology. (more…)