Throughout his career, Dave has focused on the conservation of nongame birds in Colorado and throughout the western United States. His extensive work on Lesser Prairie-Chicken conservation and the design and implementation of nongame bird population monitoring programs is of particular relevance within the PLJV region.

The collaboration with PLJV also helps Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) with the conservation of high priority species and fosters connections with other partners, broadening conservation efforts to ecologically important scales. Since 2015, Dave has supervised the Species Conservation Unit for CPW, which works toward the statewide coordination of conservation programs for Threatened and Endangered species and implementation of the Colorado State Wildlife Action Plan.

Prior to his current position, Dave was the Bird Conservation Coordinator for CPW and Assistant Nongame Migratory Bird Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Dave received a bachelor’s degree in fisheries and wildlife from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree in biology from Kansas State University where he studied the impacts of the Conservation Reserve Program on grassland birds in eastern Kansas. He then investigated methods to model habitat quality for American woodcock at the Pennsylvania State University and received his Ph.D. in wildlife and fisheries science.