I am a professor of biology at Chapman University in Orange, California. As an ecologist, I have always been interested in how animals use and acquire space where they live and breed. Since most animals must compete for space with others of their species, my interest has led naturally to study of animal aggression and competition. My PhD focused on how the social rank of a white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) in a winter dominance hierarchy affected its local movements and likelihood of survival. I have also investigated aggression and breeding among stripe-backed wrens (Campylorhynchus nuchalis) in Venezuela. But since 1993, my work has focused on territory defense, habitat selection, and breeding behavior of loons in northern Wisconsin and, more recently, north-central Minnesota.

In 2019, a thorough analysis of the demography of my Wisconsin loon population revealed alarming declines in the survival rates of chicks and young adults. Faced with the possible disappearance of loons from northern Wisconsin during my lifetime, I have turned my attention to conservation of loons in the Upper Midwest.

My research has been moving forward in two directions since then. First, I have begun to learn what is causing the Wisconsin decline, taking advantage of the high-resolution and long-term data in our traditional study area there. Second, I have sought to learn about the geographic scope of the problem by establishing a new marked study population in north-central Minnesota. As in Wisconsin, we assiduously measure return rates of marked adults and chicks, quantify breeding success, and determine causes of breeding failure in the new Minnesota Study Area. We are still analyzing these demographic data from our first five years. However, we now have enough data that the patterns within the Minnesota study population have begun to come into focus. In a nutshell, north-central Minnesota shows the same worrisome demography that we know so well from Wisconsin: high adult survival, low reproductive success, and an alarmingly low rate of survival in the young adult age class. We have seen this picture before and are increasingly convinced that Minnesota — at least north-central Minnesota — is in the same decline that we have documented thoroughly in Wisconsin.