Award Recipients

This award recognizes an individual BWG member for their career-long contribution to the field of biometrics and the application of biometrics to the field of wildlife science and management. The 2023 recipient was Dr. Larissa Bailey. Dr. Bailey is currently a professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University (CSU). She teaches a variety of classes, and she serves as an undergraduate advisor and as a major professor or committee member to more than 10 students (as of summer 2023), which is typical of her advising commitment. She has successfully funded and provided direction to 8 undergraduate honors thesis students, 5 MS students, and 6 PhD students during her tenure at CSU. In addition, Dr. Bailey has served as faculty supervisor for the CSU student chapter of TWS since 2009. Dr. Bailey has been active in TWS and the BWG throughout her career, serving on the board of BWG and organizing BWG-sponsored symposia. She has also championed training in quantitative methods including occupancy and capture-mark-recapture modeling by co-teaching over 15 workshops. After finishing her PhD at North Carolina State University, Dr. Bailey worked as a postdoc at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center under Dr. Jim Nichols. She contributed her skills to a multitude of projects for the Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) and became a principal investigator for the Northeast Region of ARMI. After 4 years at Patuxent, she accepted a position at CSU. Dr. Bailey has made many contributions to the application and development of quantitative methods to assess demography, the effects of stressors such as disease, invasive species, and habitat change on wildlife communities (including co-authorship on the book “Occupancy estimation and modeling: Inferring patterns and dynamics of species occurrence” which has been cited over 4,000 times). She continues to move the field forward, as many of her students have gone on to become leaders in the field of wildlife biology. Importantly, she has demonstrated how to integrate science and modeling into conservation decision making in multiple ways: from the development and application of cutting-edge quantitative science to being a role model for successful, insightful, and respectful collaboration. 

The Biometrics Working Group’s Award of Excellence seeks to recognize one BWG member for their career-long contributions to the field of wildlife science and management. The 2020 recipient was Dr.  Dennis Heisey, who has made extensive  contributions to the wildlife profession  through development and applications of  quantitative methods in the field of wildlife  health. Dr. Heisey, who is now retired from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National  Wildlife Health Center, started his career at  the Minnesota Department of Natural  Resources. He published seminal works in wildlife health and in human health, another field of expertise. His 1985 paper “Evaluation of survival and cause-specific  mortality rates using telemetry data” (J. of  Wildlife Management 49:668-674) has been cited over 700 times. Throughout his career,  Dr. Heisey mentored many young scientists  and helped them develop critical quantitative skills. He also conducted many workshops and seminars on advanced topics, including workshops on the analyses of time-to-event data for TWS and the BWG.

The 2019 recipient was Dr. David Otis, who has made extensive contributions to the wildlife profession through his developments and dissemination of rigorous quantitative methods. Dr. Otis is currently an affiliate faculty in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University (CSU). Despite being retired, he continues to serve on graduate committees, boards of local non-governmental conservation groups, provides guests lectures, and conducts research with colleagues at CSU and elsewhere. Dr. Otis has been active in TWS and the BWG throughout his career. He has dedicated much of his professional career to mentoring graduate students and young professionals in his role as the U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Unit Leader at both Clemson University and Iowa State University. Many of his former graduate students are active members of TWS and BWG and/or leaders in other professional organizations. They regularly comment on their appreciation of his advice and mentorship during their graduate programs and beyond, during their professional careers. Dr. Otis’s leadership and work in the development of novel quantitative tools for estimation and prediction of dove population parameters has been crucial in advancing sound scientific harvest management for this species and informed processes for other important game species. Lastly, his seminal paper on closed-population capture-recapture models (Otis et al. 1978; cited over 3,000 times) was the foundation of modern population estimation methods.

The 2018 recipient was Dr. David Anderson, who has made extensive contributions to the wildlife profession by recognizing areas lacking in statistical rigor and developing and communicating superior alternatives. He was received recognition for his work from Colorado State University (Colorado State University Alumni Professional Achievement Award and Warner College of Natural Resources Distinguished Alumni Award), the Colorado Chapter of The Wildlife Society (Douglas L. Gilbert Award), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Special Achievement Award.), the U.S. Department of the Interior (Meritorious Service Award), and The Wildlife Society (The Aldo Leopold Memorial Award and Medal). 

Throughout Dr. Anderson’s career, he excelled in identifying a major problem, constructing and leading a team to work together to provide a solution, communicating that solution in peer-reviewed publications, and providing freely available software to practitioners. During Dr. Anderson’s time with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he recognized that using a life table approach to estimate survival from banding data was not appropriate. To address this issue, he recruited a statistician, Dr. Kenneth Burnham, and collaborated with Dr. Douglas Robson and his graduate student, Dr. Cavell Brownie, to develop the revolutionary software ESTIMATE and BROWNIE, that revolutionized the analysis of band recovery data.

Dr. Anderson began his career with the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit as the Unit Leader of the Utah Cooperative Wildlife Unit at the Utah State University. While there, he contributed to Wildlife Monograph 62 (TWS Monograph Award 1984), which described methods for obtaining statistical inference from capture data, and resulted in the development of the software CAPTURE. He also pursued an issue that had plagued him during his M.S. work, when he realized that nests farther from the transect line were less likely to be observed than those on or near the line. His dogged pursuit of this issue results in Wildlife Monograph 72 (TWS Monograph Award 1981), along with the software TRANSECT. Dr. Anderson then moved to Colorado State University as the Unit Leader of the Colorado Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, where his work on salmon smolt travel through dams resulted in American Fisheries Monograph 5 and the software program RELEASE.

Dr. Anderson is perhaps best known for his work on model selection, an issue he dealt with in all of the projects mentioned. He was an early critique of p-values and his interest in model selection resulted in a number of manuscripts and two editions of the book “Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: A Practical Information-Theoretic Approach”, which can be found in the office of almost every quantitative wildlife professional.

Dr. Anderson has always been generous in allowing others to received recognition for collaborative work, even when he might have deserved to have been senior author. None of these projects, which have revolutionized the field of wildlife biometrics, would have been completed without his insights, organizational skills, and motivating influences. He has also increased the coolness factor of the Colorado State University Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology by occasionally parking his assortment of collector vehicles in front of the building. Congratulations, Dr. Anderson, and many thanks for all you have done and continue to do for the field of wildlife biometrics.

Bill Kendall is first mentioned in BWG newsletters in 1997- when he was elected chair. Since then he has been an active member, organizing symposiums and workshops, and serving on the board.  Bill began his wildlife career with USFWS before transitioning to a research biometrician with USGS Patuxent, where he remained for 14 years before moving to Colorado as Unit Leader of the Wildlife Coop Unit.

Bill has made numerous contributions to the literature in wildlife statistics, resulting in over 100 publications ( I counted on his website), and over 6000 citations. Bill has published manuscripts on capture-recapture techniques in journals such as Ecology and Biometrics, including his seminal paper “Estimating temporary emigration using capture-recapture data with Pollock's robust design” cited 654 times. Bill has been responsible for numerous innovative contributions based on the robust design, including substantial work on the open robust design and robust design extensions of multistate and multi-event models.

Bill was a member of the original FWS team that implemented the formal adaptive harvest management program for mid-continent mallards in 1995, contributing to such tasks as model development and procedures for model weight updating. Bill has continued to be a proponent of adaptive decision processes, teaching these ideas in courses and workshops at a variety of venues over the years. Overall, Bill's contributions make him a worthy candidate for the BWG's award of excellence!

This award seeks to “recognize individual BWG members for their career-long contribution to the field of biometrics and the application of biometrics to the field of wildlife science and management.” It is hard to think of an individual more worthy of this recognition than Gary White.  In fact, Gary’s career contributions are legion. After finishing his PhD at Ohio State University, Gary went on to a post-doctoral position in Utah, spent 7 years at Los Alamos National Laboratories, and ultimately took up a position at Colorado State University in1984. 

During his career, Gary produced foundational work in population dynamics (much of it informed by his rigorous field studies of ungulate populations) and population analysis methodology, with a particular focus on mark-recapture methods. Gary also authored a large share of the software catalog used for analysis of population data, including CAPTURE, RELEASE, NOREMARK, and – his emphasis in recent years – Program MARK. Gary’s software is used worldwide, and he has supported its use through training courses taught around the globe. Google Scholar records Gary’s citations at just under 30,000, which is nothing short of phenomenal. In addition, Gary advised a large cadre of graduate students over the years. Gary retired from CSU in 2007, but this has not slowed his contributions. Gary continues to program, teach, and publish. 

In addition, Gary’s contributions to the BWG are notable. Gary was an at-large member of the initial steering committee of BWG in 1995. Since then, Gary has always attended meetings and has contributed a large amount of his time as the webpage manager for BWG. Gary is also one of a handful of people who serve as a sort of institutional memory for the Group. Gary’s contributions to the larger Society are impressive as well. In particular, Gary served as a member of TWS Council from 2008 to 2014. But perhaps most notably, Gary was the 2000 winner of the TWS Aldo Leopold Award – the highest honor bestowed by our Society.  In short, Gary has exhibited exactly the kind of excellence that the BWG Award of Excellence seeks to highlight.

The Biometrics Working Group’s Award of Excellence seeks to recognize individual BWG members for their career-long contribution to the field of biometrics and the application of biometrics to the field of wildlife science and management. This year we would like to honor Dr. Douglas H. Johnson for his extensive contributions to the field of biometrics. Dr. Johnson is a current member of the Biometrics Working Group (BWG) and has a long history of contributing to the group. He has served on the Board from 1998–2000, and was Chair-elect 2005–2006, Chair 2006–2007, and Past-Chair 2007–2008. Dr. Johnson provided the computer facilities to host the first BWG web site. Against his supervisor’s admonitions, Dr. Johnson consistently attends TWS Annual Meetings, usually with his affiliation blacked out. Dr. Johnson has made significant contributions to the application of biometrics to the field of wildlife management and science in both development of new techniques and application of biometrical methods to wildlife management. His contributions started in the 1970’s with papers on estimation of survival from band returns, nest success, and general waterfowl research methods. Recently he is most noted for his informative and entertaining articles on P values, indices, multi-model inference. He has a knack for David taking on Goliath, but usually with much more ammunition than a single stone. His recent contributions to management concern grassland birds and Sandhill Cranes. In addition to providing statistical expertise for many of his colleagues at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, Dr. Johnson has funded research projects and mentored a variety of graduate students. USGS recognized his accomplishments with his elevation to Senior Scientist. The Wildlife Society recognized the significance of Dr. Johnson’s contributions to the profession when he was awarded the Aldo Leopold Award and Medal in 2010, the highest honor bestowed by TWS.</p>

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The Biometrics Working Group’s Award of Excellence seeks to recognize individual BWG members for their career-long contribution to the field of biometrics and the application of biometrics to the field of wildlife science and management. This year we would like to honor Dr. Kenneth P. Burnham for his extensive contributions to the field of biometrics. Dr. Burnham has made significant advances on experimental design, sampling protocols, and analysis theory for marked animals. He has advanced the theory and application of “open” capture-recapture models. His fundamental work on line and point transect sampling and analysis (“distance sampling”) has had an enormous impact on monitoring programs throughout the world. His most significant impact is arguably in advancement and advocacy of the information theoretic approach to data analysis and inference (suggested by the ~25,000 citations of his and Dr. Anderson’s book Model Selection and Multimodel Inference). His resume shows 192 publications including 6 books, 11 monographs, 16 book chapters, and 112 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Science Citation Index (Google Scholar) reports that his publications have been cited over 62,000 times. Since retirement in 2009 Dr. Burnham has continued to publish important papers and remain active in the profession. He is a great leader in the field of biometrics.

Dr. James Nichols, a charter member of the Biometrics Working Group and long-time member of The Wildlife Society, has been making outstanding contributions to wildlife science, management, and education, for the 37 years he has served as a wildlife biologist at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. This work has largely been focused on (1) providing designs and estimation approaches for maximizing the strength of inference from ecological  studies or monitoring, or (2) providing approaches for making more informed wildlife management decisions in the face of uncertainty; linking objectives, monitoring, and modeling. His research in accounting for detection probability in statistical inference has produced seminal publications in analysis of band recoveries, multistate models, temporary emigration, transience, population growth (via capture and point counts), state uncertainty, occupancy, etc. This work has led directly to great advancements in the population ecology and evolutionary ecology of various taxa, as well as stronger inference in community ecology and biogeography. His scientific contributions, which include 371 papers, books, monographs, edited books, book chapters, and proceedings, have been cited more than 14,000 times. He has also served as reviewer for 115 journals. Although not an academic, Nichols has advised or served on committees for 69 students at 32 universities, spanning 7 countries, and has mentored many of the quantitative ecologists working in wildlife today.

In addition, he has long been a leader in the management of federal trust species, especially waterfowl, culminating in his major contribution to the development of adaptive management approaches being implemented on various taxa within the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He was among the first cohort to be named Senior Scientists within the U. S. Geological Survey, and frequently serves as an advisor to leaders within the U. S. Department of the Interior.

The 2022 Biometrics Working Group Student Award of Excellence recipient is Anna Moeller, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Montana. Moeller’s research focuses on understanding of the linkages between resource states, habitat quality, and cumulative survival probability, which is at the center of wildlife management. Her framework for defining habitat quality with time-series survival probabilities has broad implications for habitat management, especially when resource states (quality or quantity) may be dynamic. Collectively, Moeller’s research demonstrates her deep understanding of challenges facing wildlife managers, gaps in current biometric approaches, and a strong commitment to collaborative wildlife management and conservation and is much deserving of this award. 

This award recognizes an early career TWS member for their contribution to the development and/or application of biometrics to the field of wildlife management, conservation, and ecology. The 2023 recipient was Samuel Ayebare for his paper, “An environmental habitat gradient and within-habitat segregation enable co-existence of ecologically similar bird species” published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In this paper, Samuel and his co-authors evaluated how factors that describe the abiotic Grinnelian and biotic Eltonian niches allow for the co-existence of sympatric species within a diverse community of montane tropic forest birds in east-central Africa. The authors developed a novel framework in the study of co-existence mechanisms. Samuel’s paper highlights the application of multi-species distribution models in the study of co-existence patterns of large communities across broad spatial extents. As such, it provides a framework to researchers interested in harnessing “big data” for examining factors and processes (abiotic and biotic) that influence the abundance and distribution of species across space and time. Samuel Ayebare is a PhD candidate at Michigan State University in the Zipkin Quantitative Ecology Lab.  

Ayebare S, Doser JW, Plumptre AJ, Owiunji I, Mugabe H, Zipkin EF. 2023 An environmental habitat gradient and within-habitat segregation enable co-existence of ecologically similar bird species. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 290: 20230467. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0467

Quantifying spatial and temporal patterns in biodiversity is a fundamental task in ecology and wildlife management, yet resources for collecting data can be limited and opportunistic based on program funding. In this paper, Dr. Jeffrey Doser led the development of an integrated community occupancy model (ICOM) approach that integrates detection data from several existing monitoring programs with differing focal species, sampling designs, level of replication, and detection probabilities to improve precision and accuracy in multi-species occupancy trends. Through an extensive simulation exercise, Doser et al. compares community-level model performance to single-species models using several validation procedures, and then applies the community model to several forest bird species using detection data from three monitoring programs. The paper is well written and has clear implications for improving how we estimate and predict changes in multiple-species distributions. 

Doser J., Leuenberge W., Sillett T.S., Hallworth M.T., Zipkin E. F. 2022. Integrated community occupancy models: A framework to assess occurrence and biodiversity dynamics using multiple data sources, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13: 919-932. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13811 

The Biometrics Working Group’s Outstanding Student Paper Award recognizes an early career TWS member for their contribution to the development and/or application of biometrics to the field of wildlife management, conservation, and ecology. The 2021 recipient was Dr. Robbie Emmet for his paper, “Modeling multi-scale occupancy for monitoring rare and highly mobile species” published in Ecosphere in 2021 (Volume 12(7), e03637). In this paper, Dr. Emmet and co-authors developed a novel continuous-time, multi-scale occupancy model that simultaneously accounts for violations of the closure assumption and low detection probability, and is therefore useful in the study of rare, elusive, and wide-ranging species. The instantaneous occupancy parameter resulting from the model can be used to detect trends in abundance using presence-absence data and requires only one detector per sampling unit by substituting time for space. The paper advances the ability to effectively monitor species of conservation concern, like wolverines, the species featured in this work. This well-deserved award recognizes Dr. Emmet’s key role in developing new tools that help monitor and conserve wildlife, particularly highly mobile rare species that have been notoriously hard to monitor. Dr. Emmet received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences in August 2021 and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Natural History Survey.

Emmet R.L., Long R.A., Gardner B. 2021. Modeling multi‐scale occupancy for monitoring rare and highly mobile species, Ecosphere, 12(7): e03637. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3637

The Biometrics Working Group’s Outstanding Student Paper Award recognizes an early career TWS member for their contribution to the development and/or application of biometrics to the field of wildlife management, conservation, and ecology. The 2020 recipient was Dr. Catherine Sun for her paper, “Incorporating citizen science data in spatially explicit integrated population models” published in Ecology in 2019 (Volume 100, e02777). Her work focuses on understanding spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of wildlife populations, with the goal of informing conservation and management. Her research draws heavily on hierarchical modeling (primarily spatial capture-recapture, occupancy, and its derivatives) and non invasive field sampling (barbed wire hair snares and camera trapping). In this paper, Dr. Sun and colleagues developed an integrated population model that combines systematically collected spatial capture recapture data with opportunistic presence absence data. Application of the model to black bear populations in New York illustrated how this approach can improve precision and accuracy of abundance and demographic parameters, particularly for species that are rare or dispersed over large geographic ranges.

Sun, C. C., Royle, J. A., and Fuller, A. K..2019. Incorporating citizen science data in spatially explicit integrated population models, Ecology, 100(9): e02777. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2777 

The Biometrics Working Group’s Outstanding Student Paper Award recognizes the contribution of an early career TWS member for their contribution to the development and/or application of biometrics to the field of wildlife management, conservation, and ecology. The 2019 recipient was Dr. Marjorie Liberati for her paper, “Addressing ecological, economic, and social tradeoffs of refuge expansion in constrained landscapes” published in the journal Landscape Ecology in 2019 (Volume 34, 627-647). Her work focuses on habitat conservation in working landscapes where there is high demand for undeveloped lands. Establishing protected land networks in these social-ecological systems necessitates consideration of multiple and often competing objectives. The analytical core of the paper is a spatially explicit, multi-objective optimization conducted using Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II. Two exciting aspects of this work are the use of efficiency frontiers (e.g., dark points in Figures 3 – 5) to visualize the tradeoffs among objectives and the development of maps (Figure 6) to indicate the percent inclusion of a particular property in a solution set; both are simple yet highly effective ways to communicate with conservation decision makers.

Liberati, M.R., Rittenhouse, C.D. & Vokoun, J.C. Addressing ecological, economic, and social tradeoffs of refuge expansion in constrained landscapes. Landscape Ecol 34, 627–647 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-019-00798-8 

This award recognizes a group or an individual that has made an outstanding contribution to the development and application of quantitative methods to the fields of wildlife science and management. The 2023 recipient was The Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM) at the University of St. Andrews. Since 1997, the efforts of numerous individuals associated with CREEM have significantly advanced wildlife population assessment using distance sampling and related methods. Virtually anyone using distance sampling in the past 20+ years has directly benefitted from the efforts of this group of professionals. Many of these services have been free to the users, and their support often exceeds that of proprietary software providers. Their contributions include: the software development, training, professional outreach and support of program Distance; maintaining the Distance Sampling homepage and listserv; and providing substantial support, research and refinements to the application of distance sampling and related methodology to estimate abundance of wildlife populations.  

The BWG’s Special Recognition Award recognizes a group or an individual that has made an outstanding contribution to the development and application of quantitative methods to the fields of wildlife science and management. The 2021 recipient was Dr. Tanya Shenk for being a life-long advocate and implementor of quantitative methods in wildlife management. She has been an active member of the BWG and served as a board member in 1997-1998 and 2010-2011. Her dissertation explored how to detect density dependence in natural populations in the presence of sampling variation and that work resulted in a very well-cited paper in Ecological Monographs. After completing her Ph.D., she took a position as a Researcher for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, where she developed a monitoring system for the reintroduced Lynx population in Colorado. She promoted rigorous management practices and worked with numerous researchers to develop techniques to improve the management of the Lynx population, as well as lead research on the endangered Preble’s Jumping Mouse. In her current position with the National Park Service, she is again collaborating with many to develop and apply rigorous quantitative methods to management of wildlife populations. This well-deserved award recognizes Dr. Shenk’s role in advocating for the use of quantitative methods across various wildlife management agencies and species. Dr. Shenk is an Ecologist with the National Park Service and Research Coordinator with the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.

The BWG’s Special Recognition Award is  meant to recognize a group or an individual  that has made an outstanding contribution to  the development and application of  quantitative methods to the fields of wildlife  science and management. The 2020  recipient was Dr. Byron Kenneth Williams,  who has been a leader in developing and  applying decision-theoretic approaches to  effectively manage wildlife populations. He  has served many roles as a scientist and an  administrator at the highest levels of  government agencies. Throughout his  career, Dr. Williams has been a strong  advocate for structured decision making and  adaptive management strategies in wildlife  science. He was a key member, and the  intellectual leader, of the team that  developed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife  Service program for adaptive harvest  management of mallard ducks, the first  formal application of adaptive management  of wildlife in the world. Beyond his  contributions to quantitative decision  processes, he has advanced the field of  biometrics in other ways, including  contributions to methods in multivariate  statistical analyses and band recovery  models. He has published numerous papers,  technical reports, and books, including a  comprehensive text on modeling, estimation,  and optimization methods in wildlife  management (Williams et al. 2002; cited  over 3,000 times). Dr. Williams has also  been active in TWS and the BWG  throughout his career, most recently serving  as the Executive Director of TWS from 2013-2017.

In 2017, the BWG recognized Dr. Jeff Laake with this award. In the early stages of Dr. Laake’s accomplished career he was heavily involved in developing line transect methods that eventually became known as distance sampling, coauthoring the seminal Wildlife Monograph “Estimation of density from line transect sampling of biological populations” with Ken Burnham and David Anderson in 1980. Around this time, Dr. Laake also produced program “TRANSECT,” a precursor to the widely used program “DISTANCE.” Dr. Laake went on to work for the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission in San Diego, where he had the opportunity to apply line transect methods to study dolphin populations impacted by tuna fishing. Dr. Laake then relocated to Colorado State University and completed his Ph.D. with Dr. David Anderson. His research was innovative, and applied fisheries modeling techniques to estimation of wildlife abundance. Also during this time, he completed the first version of what is now program DISTANCE. 

After completing his doctorate, Dr. Laake began a long career with the National Marine Fisheries Service at the NOAA National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML). He continued his work on distance sampling methods and software, including involvement in upgrades of DISTANCE software with colleagues at the University of St. Andrews, development of mark-recapture distance sampling (MRDS) methods, and coauthoring books such as “Distance Sampling: Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations” and “Advanced Distance Sampling.” As a measure of his success, the DISTANCE software has nearly 50,000 downloads. In addition, Dr. Laake developed a sequence of software tools, including the R packages RMARK and MARKED, which have accumulated a devoted user base.

Dr. Laake would rarely say no to a researcher or student in need. Whether it be answering questions about his software, working with students, or helping a wildlife ecologist with a tricky analysis, his door was always open. As of April 2018, he had contributed a total of 986 posts on the www.phidot.org analysis forum page, generously giving his time to researchers with questions (no doubt a small sample of his total interactions with practitioners!). In our view, these latter traits have been just as important as his formidable scholarly achievements in advancing the use of biometrics in the wildlife profession.

In 2017, Dr. Laake retired from a long and productive career with the NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Lab. His friends and colleagues at the BWG wish him well on this next great adventure.

Cavell Brownie

Dr. Cavell Brownie’s contributions to the wildlife profession began with the research that became her Ph.D. thesis. The importance and volume of work completed by Dr. Brownie for her Ph.D. were remarkable. She developed a set of models designed to deal specifically with band recovery data for hunted species. She developed advanced models to estimate such quantities as seasonal survival rates using data from 2 banding periods per year, and the covariance between instantaneous rates of hunting and nonhunting mortality. Most importantly, the new models were published not only in the standard statistical journals, but also in a comprehensive monograph written for biologists. The monograph was accompanied by computer software (ESTIMATE, BROWNIE) written by Dr. Brownie and colleagues to enable biological users to obtain estimates from band recovery data.

The publications of Dr. Brownie ushered in a period of inferential rigor that was previously absent from work in the wildlife profession, signaling an end to dependence on ad hoc approaches and a turn to the formalism of mainstream statistics. Dr. Brownie then turned her attention to more general capture-recapture modeling for open animal populations. She developed a trap-response model, and as with band recovery models, she worked with others to write two synthetic monographs on capture-recapture models for open populations directed at a biological readership. The monographs and associated software became very influential in the methodological transformation of the wildlife profession that had begun with the publication of her band recovery monograph. Subsequent major contributions to capture-recapture models included the placement of robust design modeling into a formal likelihood framework and the full development of multistate models. Other contributions were to the analysis of radio telemetry data and avian point count data. Dr. Brownie recently addressed the issue of misidentification of individuals in capture-recapture studies. In summary, Dr. Brownie is very deserving of recognition by the BWG. Although she split her research time and effort among multiple disciplines, her contributions to the wildlife profession are exceptional and Dr. Brownie’s career absolutely deserves the recognition of the BWG.

James Hines

Dr. James Hines began his long career in federal service in 1977 while an undergraduate student in mathematics at the University of Maryland. When he graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.S. degree in Mathematics in 1979, he was offered a full-time position as a computer analyst with Fish and Wildlife Service, and he accepted. He immediately became a major contributor to all of the research and management work with important contributions in mark-recapture techniques, estimation of species richness and vital rates, and was heavily involved in development of software for implementing occupancy modeling. The range of application areas to which he has contributed over the last 16 years is extremely large. During his career, Dr. Hines has authored over 30 pieces of user-oriented software that are used by scientists and managers throughout the world. Dr. Hines has been extremely responsive to these users, and he maintains a Patuxent server for his software and for certain data sets. Dr. Hines also helped to develop the initial web page for the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the first real webpage making citizen-science data and analyses available to the general public. He still plays a major role in maintenance of this innovative site. 

Dr. Hines also teaches workshops and short courses on estimation methodology and associated software. He has taught > 50 such courses at universities and research institutions all over the world. He has served on university Ph.D. committees, and he has hosted many visiting research scientists seeking assistance with complex analyses. As for publication statistics, Dr. Hines has an h-index >70, well exceeding the reported average for new National Academy of Sciences inductees. In summary, Dr. Hines contributed greatly to the methodological revolution that occurred in wildlife biology over the last 3-4 decades. Without the implementation software developed by Dr. Hines and a small number of others, the assimilation of formal inference methods into the wildlife profession would have been much slower. Dr. Hines is one of the real unsung heroes of the wildlife profession, and he is very much deserving of this important BWG award.

The Biometrics Working Group’s Special Recognition Award is meant to recognize a group or an individual that has made an outstanding contribution to the development and application of quantitative methods to the fields of wildlife science and management. This year the award is presented to the Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) implemented by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ARMI has shown a deep appreciation for biometrical methods and their importance for drawing inferences about biological populations and communities. Most significantly ARMI propelled forward the development of a class of models (occupancy) that is now used worldwide by ecologists and conservation biologists. This funding support was largely responsible for dozens of papers on the development of occupancy modeling and for the 2006 book (MacKenzie et al. 2006, Academic Press; see Acknowledgements in this book) summarizing developments to that time. This development has not only been useful to ARMI projects, but has also benefited the worldwide community of animal ecologists, wildlife managers, and the field of biometrics.

A professor of statistics, biomathematics, and biology for almost 40 years, has focused his career on working closely with biologists in wildlife and fisheries to improve inference from field studies, through a combination of improvement in study design and development of robust statistical methods. Through these efforts Pollock has become a pioneer and leader in the field of statistical population ecology, making numerous seminal contributions, including capture-recapture methods (e.g., population estimation models, goodness-of-fit tests, age effects, recruitment through backward time modeling, band recoveries, tag loss, use of covariates, robust design, multistate models, and misidentification), survival analysis from telemetry, distance sampling, change-in-ratio methods, aerial surveys, catch-effort, nest survival, species richness, occupancy modeling, adjusting population indices for detection probability, and integrating sources of data into more robust models. Pollock’s papers have been cited over 7,000 times according to Web of Science, and have won multiple awards from The Wildlife Society, the American Statistical Association, and the Environmetrics Society.

Although Pollock’s numerous publications have been important contributions, Pollock’s most important biometrical contributions to the wildlife profession have been through the consultation and mentoring he has provided to biologists, and the students he has trained to do the same. Pollock was the director of the Southeastern Cooperative Fish and Game Statistics Project for many years, providing consultation, analyses, and workshops for wildlife agencies of the southeastern U. S. Pollock has mentored many students in statistics, biomathematics, fish and wildlife, and ecology at North Carolina State University, many of which are leaders today within the wildlife and statistical ecology professions.

This award recognizes a long-term or lifetime achievement, or an exemplary short-term contribution by a BWG member. The 2023 recipient was Dr. Dan Walsh for his contributions to the BWG, including: his service as Chair-elect, Chair, and Past-chair (2019-2021); his co-organization of multiple workshops, including Time to Event Analyses (2019), Intermediate R (2016), Basics of R (2015), and assistance with Bayesian Survival Analyses (2009 and 2010); and co-organization of the BWG sponsored symposiums Quantitative Applications in Wildlife Disease (2019) and Fuzzy Boundaries: Machine Learning for Ecology (2022). In addition to his service as a BWG member, Dan has made many contributions to the field of quantitative ecology, particularly in the realm of wildlife disease systems, and in his current role as Unit Leader of the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit continues to have significant impact on wildlife research and management. Further, Dan acts as a recruiter for BWG and TWS by encouraging and welcoming students, post-docs and other early career professionals into the organization.  

Dr. Richard Chandler has been a long-term and active member of the Biometrics Working Group. He has made significant contributions to the BWG, most notably by serving as the group’s treasurer for six consecutive years (2015 to 2021), following a one-year stint as the BWG board member responsible for Membership and Student Travel Grants. Moreover, he has co-organized and participated in multiple BWG-sponsored workshops and symposia (speaker at the symposium ‘Spatially explicit capture-recapture models’ in 2015; co-organizer of the symposium "Recent approaches for understanding spatial processes using hierarchical metapopulation models" in 2016; co-organizer of the workshop ‘An Introduction to Spatial Capture-Recapture’ in 2016 and 2017), contributing to the group’s missions to advance the use of quantitative methods in managing populations and habitats.

The BWG’s Appreciation Award recognizes a long-term or life-time achievement, or anexemplary short-term contribution by a BWG member. The 2021 recipient was Dr. Chris Sutherland for his many impactful contributions to the BWG since 2016. Dr. Sutherland served as a BWG board member for several terms, overseeing elections in 2018-2019, membership and Student Travel Grants in 2017-2018, and technical sessions in 2016-2017. He has worked diligently to support and grow BWG by helping maintain the BWG Twitter account (over 800 followers), which has helped increase the audience and representation within the BWG. Notably, he helped organize and teach Spatial Capture Recapture workshops at the 2016 and 2017 TWS conferences, and his service to the BWG has made critical statistical tools and methods accessible to a diversity of wildlife biologists. The BWG greatly appreciates all the time and energy he has put into making the BWG successful and we’re glad to be able to acknowledge his contributions. Dr. Sutherland is currently a Reader at the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modeling at the University of St. Andrews, where he is taking the lead in the development of the university’s first Masters program training students in statistical ecology.

The Biometrics Working Group’s Appreciation Award seeks to recognize a long-term or life-time achievement, or an exemplary short-term contribution by a BWG member. The 2020 recipient was Dr. Robin Russell for her many contributions to the BWG over the last decade. Dr. Russell served on the BWG board from 2013-2017, including time leading the group as Chair Elect, Chair, and Past-Chair. She has worked diligently to support and grow BWG by leading numerous workshops and symposia at TWS annual meetings. These efforts have aided in the dissemination of critical statistical tools and methods to wildlife biologists at various stages in their careers. The BWG board and members are delighted to present this award to Dr.  Russell for her many contributions and for serving as a tireless advocate for the BWG and its mission.

The 2019 recipient was Dr. Amy Davis for her dedicated service to the BWG. Dr. Davis is a research scientist with the National Wildlife Research Center in Colorado, USA. She has been on the BWG board since 2012, chaired from 2017-2018, and served as secretary from 2014-2016. She has also been an outstanding contributor to sponsored symposiums. The BWG board and members are incredibly grateful for Dr. Davis’ extensive contributions.

The 2018 recipient was Dr. Andy Royle, for his recent contributions to Biometrics Working Group workshops, symposiums, and leadership. In 2016 and 2017, Dr. Royle co-organized the workshop “An Introduction to Spatial Capture-Recapture,” which has been a consistently popular workshop at TWS. Dr. Royle also organized the 2012 symposium “Recent Developments in and Applications of Spatial Capture-Recapture Models”, the 2015 symposium “Spatial Capture-Recapture Models: Methodological Developments and Applications” and co-organized the 2018 symposium “Animal Movements: Advances in Movement Modeling and their Applications.” Dr. Royle also served as a BWG board-member in 2016, undertaking the role of organizing technical sessions. 

Grey Pendelton 

Grey Pendelton has demonstrated continued and sustained commitment to Biometrics Working Group of The Wildlife Society over the years.  Most recently, he was Treasurer of BWG for four years from 2011-2015, and since abdicating his position has willingly continued to assist the current Treasurer with his duties.  He is a shining example of BWG and its membership.

Ryan Nielson 

Ryan Nielson has exemplified leadership, dedication, and service to the Biometrics Working Group of The Wildlife Society.  Ryan has served as Chair of BWG from 2013-2014, and has participated in several workshops including the Basics of the R programming language held in Winnipeg in 2015, Estimating Resource Selection Functions using R in 2014 in Pittsburgh, Spatial Statistics in R in Portland in 2012, and Advanced Ecological Data Analysis using R in 2010.  These workshops have helped fiscally support the many activities of BWG.  Ryan's service has been vital to BWG and is highly commendable 

John Sauer

For involvement with BWG by being a board member (most notably as a past chair), and for organizing numerous symposia and workshops of great benefit to BWG and the TWS.

Lyman McDonald

Lyman was involved early with the formation of BWG and has served as an officer several times, including chair. He has also organized workshops and symposia, including one in Hawaii on use &amp; availability data that some claimed was the most highly attended that that they’ve ever seen. Lyman has also encouraged many of his WEST compatriots to be involved with BWG and TWS, which we think has been of great service in itself.

Duane Diefenbach

Duane has been a mainstay for the Biometrics Working Group since 1999.  He served as an officer or chair of an ad hoc committee from 1999 through 2004 and returned in 2010 to serve on the BWG Executive Board.  During his term as Chair, he oversaw the development of guidelines for BWG support and endorsement of workshops and symposia.  He was instrumental in moving BWG from paper ballots distributed and returned by mail to internet voting.  The first successful internet elections were held in the summer of 2003 after the BWG Charter was amended.  His service to the BWG has been exemplary and vital to the BWG.

Terry Shaffer

Terry has provided outstanding leadership to the Biometrics Working Group (BWG) over the last decade.  During this period Terry has served twice as Chair and in the associated positions of Chair-Elect and Past Chair.  He completed the transition of the BWG web site from its original host to its current home on the TWS web site.  He has also contributed to the success of the BWG by organizing technical sessions at the annual TWS meetings.  His efforts have contributed greatly to the vibrancy of the BWG over the last decade.

William Thompson

Bill provided exemplary service to the BWG over the last decade.  He served as Chair-Elect, Chair and Past Chair from 2005 through 2007.  During his tenure he successfully lobbied TWS leadership to reduce the scheduling conflicts among BWG-sponsored session.  His tenacious efforts to oversee and manage the transition of the BWG web site to its new home on the TWS web site laid the critical foundation for the success of this transition.  Also Bill organized several highly successful symposia at TWS annual conferences that were well attended by BWG members and others.  He has given freely of his time and energy.  His efforts have been an important factor in the success of the BWG.

Michael Conroy

Mike served on the Executive Board on several occasions.  He was instrumental in organizing numerous BWG-sponsored symposia and workshops.  His efforts have brought considerable recognition to the BWG as a leader in providing quality and timely information on important topics and new developments in biometrical methods and applications.

William Gould

Bill provided outstanding leadership through his service on the Executive Board on several occasions as a Board Member and also as the Chair.  Bill was instrumental in organizing a highly successful symposium targeted at improving biometrics education.  This symposium led to publication of a special section on biometrics education in the 2001 Wildlife Society Bulletin.

Gary White

Gary was a key member of the steering committee that led to the formation of the BWG and has been active ever since.  In addition to his direct service to the BWG, Gary has been a champion for involving students and attracting new members.  A number of Gary’s students have served on the Executive Board, received BWG student travel grants, or both.  Gary has also given generously of his time by serving as the BWG’s official webmaster.

Grey Pendleton

Grey was a key member of the steering committee that led to the formation of the BWG.  Grey served numerous stints on the BWG Executive Board, as a Board Member, Secretary, and Chair.  He was instrumental in developing and making important revisions to the BWG Charter.  He has organized several BWG-sponsored symposia and contributed to the publications from these symposia.

For leadership, dedication and initiative during the formative years of the Biometrics Working Group of The Wildlife Society.  Steve’s leadership and energy as Interim Co-Chair and the first elected Chair were instrumental in creating a solid and professional foundation for its operation.  He contributed to all facets in the development of the working group and has always been an enthusiastic advocate for the BWG.  His efforts during these critical formative years were essential to the creation of the BWG.

For leadership and dedication in bringing the Biometrics Working Group of The Wildlife Society to reality.  

Christine Bunck

Chris started and led the petition drive to initiate the Biometrics Working Group and drafted its mission statement.  She formed the Steering Committee and served initially as the chair and then as co-chair of the Steering Committee throughout the interim status of the BWG.  Her efforts were instrumental in launching the BWG.

Clint Moore

Clint was a member of the Steering Committee and served as interim treasurer and as the liaison between the Steering Committee and TWS headquarters.  He helped the BWG move forward with outstanding contributions to the draft charter.  Clint also edited and published the BWG newsletter until the first elections were held.  His efforts during these early years were crucial moving the BWG from a concept to a functioning working group.