Bio

Slaght is the Russia & Northeast Asia Coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). He manages research projects involving endangered species such as Blakiston’s fish owls and Amur tigers, and coordinates WCS avian conservation activities along the East Asia-Australasian Flyway from the Arctic to the Tropics. He received a B.A. from Drew University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota.

Slaght’s writings, scientific research, and photographs have been featured by the BBC World Service, the New York Times, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, The New Yorker, and Audubon Magazine, among others. He is the translator of Vladimir Arsenyev’s 1921 natural history classic, Across the Ussuri Kray (Indiana University Press, 2016), and he authors a blog for Scientific American about his fieldwork titled “East of Siberia.” His new book, Owls of the Eastern Ice, was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction.