BIO

Dr. L. Scott Mills is a Professor in the Wildlife Biology Program in the College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana. His research across normally disparate scientific disciplines has led to key advances in applying ecological science to wildlife conservation, including new insights into how genetic variation affects persistence of wild species, new methods for non-invasive abundance estimation and monitoring of population trend, and direct field measurements of how wildlife respond to climate change and other factors. His research species and systems range from marmots and coyotes in Olympic National Park, to endangered bighorn sheep in the California Sierra Nevada, to fruit bats in the Philippines, to snowshoe hares across North America, to snow leopards in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

Early in his career at University of Montana, Dr. Mills was awarded one of the most prestigious awards given by National Science Foundation to junior faculty: A Faculty Early Career Development award. Since then he has published over 85 scientific articles and has given over 100 professional presentations, including testimony to the U.S. Congress on the role of ethics in conservation science. His recently published textbook, Conservation of Wildlife Populations: Demography, Genetics, and Management, is already widely used by students and professionals throughout the world.

Dr. Mills has served on invited committees for the National Science Foundation, National Park Service, National Forest Service, the International Whaling Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service. He also was a member of the Board of Governors for the Society of Conservation Biology, served on the Western Governor’s Association Policy working group on Climate Change Effects on Wildlife, and was a Contributing author to the North America section of the Nobel-Prize winning report from the 2007 International Panel on Climate Change. His research has been covered by media outlets including “The Nature of Things With David Suzuki”, Discovery Channel Canada, National Public Radio, National Geographic, Science News, Science, and a number of popular magazines and newspapers.

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My primary research are in the area of applied population ecology.  My students and I use population models and genetic tools, coupled with field experiments, to infer population and community-level effects of fragmentation and other human-caused perturbations.

Some of our current projects and study systems include: a) Olympic National Park, where we have documented a steep decline in an endemic marmot species (Olympic marmot)  due to disruption of its metapopulation dynamics with the arrival of invasive coyotes;  b) endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, where we are collecting and applying data on vital rates to model the most efficient management actions; c) drivers of spatial synchrony in snowshoe hares across their range; d) snow leopards and education outreach in Bhutan; e) new methods for prioritizing endangered species recovery actions; e) new tools for monitoring ranging from estimators of trend to novel methods of non-invasive genetic sampling.

I am embarking on a major study on whether snowshoe hares will be able to adapt in place to climate change, as their cryptic coat color becomes increasingly mismatched with the background.  I am also hoping to spend an upcoming sabbatical helping to build capacity for establishing monitoring and risk assessment programs in Bhutan, a remarkable Himalayan country that is modernizing with a strong commitment to conservation.

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