Welcome! My name is Nathan (Nate) Hooven and I’m a wildlife ecologist. I earned my BS in zoology (specializing in wildlife biology and conservation) from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale in 2018, and my MS in forest and natural resource sciences from the University of Kentucky, where my research focused on habitat selection and reproductive rates of female wapiti (elk) in southeastern Kentucky. So far in my career I’ve been fortunate to work across the United States, aiding conservation, management, and research programs across a wide variety of wildlife taxa.

My primary interests are in the spatial ecology of mammals, especially herbivores. I seek to understand how animals interact with their environments across space and time, with a strong focus on applying this information directly to habitat management. Most of my work couples tracking data from animal-borne devices with remotely sensed environmental datasets to model patterns of animal movement and habitat selection in a variety of landscapes. I am particularly interested in developing models of habitat quality to gain a more complete picture of the ecological factors influencing the space use, survival, and reproduction of herbivorous mammal species. 

Currently, I am a PhD student with Dr. Dan Thornton's Mammal Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab in the School of the Environment at Washington State University (Pullman, WA). For my dissertation research, I'm studying the effects of pre-commercial thinning on snowshoe hare ecology in the Loomis State Forest in north-central Washington. Feel free to contact me via email or one of the sites listed below with any questions or inquiries. Thanks for visiting!