Mountain Communities Conference 2005: Speakers

David Mattson

David Mattson is a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey stationed at its Colorado Plateau Research Station in Flagstaff, Arizona. David has studied large carnivores for the last 24 years, focusing on puma ecology and human-puma interactions in Arizona, and the conservation and behavioral ecology of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho in the U.S.A.

He spent 14 years intensively observing grizzly bear foraging behavior and diet as well as ecological relations of foods the bears ate. These studies revealed details about a broad spectrum of bear behaviors, including their bedding, use of rub trees, consumption of dirt and earthworms, exploitation of red squirrels, pocket gophers, and meadow mice, and predation on elk, moose, and trout.

More recently, Mattson has focused on conservation issues and broad-scale evaluations of habitat conditions. These studies have broached not only the details of human-large carnivore interactions, but also the social, political, and organizational dynamics that shape the policies and practices of carnivore conservation programs. His work has been featured in the journal Science and has been widely presented, including papers in Ecology, Conservation Biology, Biological Conservation, The Journal of Wildlife Management, and the Journal of Mammalogy, and invited talks at the Smithsonian, American Museum of Natural History, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and International Conferences on Bear Research and Management.