L David Mech
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L. David Mech is an internationally recognized wolf expert, who is a senior research scientist for U.S. Department of the Interior (since 1970) and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. He has studied wolves on Isle Royale, in Minnesota, Canada, Italy, Alaska, Yellowstone, and elsewhere since 1958.
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Mech is one of the founding members of the International Wolf Center and still sits in as one of the Board of Directors. He helped launched the committee to create the facility in 1985. The project was a natural outgrowth of his wolf research and realization that people would only respect the wolf after they had come to understand it.
He has published numerous articles about wolves and other wildlife and five books about wolves; most famous of these being The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (1970) and Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation co-edited with Luigi Boitani (2003), both published by the University of Minnesota Press.
Education
- B.S., Cornell University (1958)
- Ph.D., Purdue University (1962)
Research
"My research involves monitoring wolf-deer relations in the Superior National Forest, determining the degree and manner of influence of each population on the other, and exploring the role of other factors, especially snow conditions and canine parvovirus, that influence the system. With the same system and research techniques, I am also attempting to learn as much as possible about basic life history, movements, and social ecology of both species. Meanwhile, I am conducting complementary research in Denali National Park, Alaska; on Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada; and in Yellowstone National Park. The Denali work involves examining the interactions between wolves and caribou, moose, and Dall sheep. The Ellesmere research concentrates primarily on observing the interactions of pack members with each other and with pups around a den. Supplementary work in the area includes observing wolf interactions with musk-oxen and arctic hare. The Yellowstone National Park studies concentrate primarily on wolf interactions with prey."
External Link
Faculty homepage (http://www.fw.umn.edu/Personnel/Faculty/Mech.html)