Good lord, where to begin? Aw, there’s not that much to tell. I am a wildlife biologist (30 years with the National Park Service, most notably at Channel Islands and Death Valley) after which I currently taught science at a Catholic school in Ventura, California. Which is a little bit ironic, or at least suggests that I came full circle, being a product of Catholic schooling myself. In fact, 16 years of Catholic schooling – I joke that grad school was the first time I attended public school (which isn’t quite true – kindergarten was at a public school. Catholic schools didn’t have kindergartens then. Now they do. Catholic schools have even added pre-school classrooms. Get ‘em while they’re young.).

I grew up in suburban Los Angeles, in a small, insulated beach city, El Segundo. Large, Irish-Catholic family. My twin and I were the oldest of six kids.  You’ll find a lot about that experience in my book, Our Lady, Queen of the Highways, which, for lack of a better word, is a memoir. Left idyllic southern California for the frozen tundra of northern Indiana to attend Notre Dame, where my dad and two brothers also went to college. The Catholic Camelot. That’s in the book, too. Grad school at Northern Arizona in Flagstaff – perhaps primarily because I liked the locale – and that’s where I found my passion, wildlife biology and conservation. There are things worth saving. Or going to the mat for. Which led to the National Park Service and extremely gratifying and consequential work, contributing to the eventually successful recovery of the endangered  island fox (see the Island Fox section for that story).  My ex Cathy and I authored a book about it: Decline and Recovery of the Island Fox (2010, Cambridge University Press).

Let’s see, married twice (though not at the same time), in Santa Fe and in Chicago. Cathy and I had two girls, Bridget and Carrie, whom I love to the moon and back. Have a German shepherd and two cats, whom I love as well, at least to the moon. I enjoy living a pretty active life (you know, hiking and all that) in the Ventura area with my partner, Nell, who, among other things. does triathlons. I watch her do triathlons.

And I have spent my life trying to be outside.