Craig is currently a professor and Bollenbach Chair in Wildlife Management in the Natural Resource Ecology and Management Department at Oklahoma State University. With over 25 years of experience in wetland research in the Southern Great Plains, he shares his expertise on shorebird, wetland and grassland gamebird ecology with PLJV’s Science Advisory Team. Craig says his collaboration with PLJV has allowed him to think more broadly about conservation in the region as well as how his research can effectively address issues and help find solutions.

He received his bachelor’s degree in natural resources with distinction in wildlife management from Ohio State University and his master’s in wildlife biology from Iowa State University where he studied the ecology of wet meadow invertebrates and sandhill crane foraging ecology. Craig completed his Ph.D. at Texas Tech University, where he studied the ecology and management of shorebirds in the playa lakes region of Texas, and then spent a year as a temporary faculty member at the University of Rhode Island followed by four years as the avian ecologist for the Platte River Whooping Crane Trust in central Nebraska.

Craig’s research has focused on several research areas including the response of grassland birds to fire-grazing interactions, assessment and classification of wetlands, wetland bird ecology, aquatic and terrestrial invertebrate ecology, and upland gamebird ecology and management. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles in a wide variety of journals including Ecological Applications, Journal of Applied Ecology, Wetlands, Global Change Biology, and Landscape Ecology. In 2013, he co-edited a three-volume book on Wetland Research Techniques.