Superintendent's International Lecture
Dr. Frank van Manen
Bear research and management in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has served as a bellwether for bear conservation efforts worldwide. In this presentation, Frank will explore how the coproduction model of science can help bridge research and policy in a complex decision environment, using the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team as a case study. He will further compare grizzly bear conservation accomplishments and challenges in the Yellowstone region with those of several bear species in other portions of the world, how those intersect with the global environmental challenges of our time, and how they relate to priorities of the Department of the Interior.
Dr. Frank van Manen is a Supervisory Research Wildlife Biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey - Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in Bozeman, Montana. He is the Team Leader of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST), a science consortium of federal, state, and tribal agencies established in 1973 to address research and monitoring needs regarding the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear population. Frank earned a M.Sc. degree in Biology from Wageningen University in the Netherlands in 1989 and Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Tennessee in 1994. He researched black bears, red wolves, and Florida panthers in the southeastern U.S. during the 1990s and 2000s. He moved to Bozeman, Montana in 2012 to join the IGBST, with research addressing a wide variety of topics on the ecology of Yellowstone grizzly bears. Frank has collaborated on bear research projects in Ecuador (Andean bears), Sri Lanka (sloth bears), China (giant panda), and Malaysia (sun bears). He was elected President of the International Association for Bear Research and Management from 2007 to 2013 and served on its Executive Council for 15 years.