L. David Mech
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Lucyan David Mech (born January 18, 1937), also known as Dave Mech, is an American wolf expert, a senior research scientist for the U.S. Department of the Interior (since 1970), currently with the Department of Interior's U.S. Geological Survey (since 1973), and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. He has researched wolves since 1958 in places such as Minnesota, Ellesmere Island, Canada, Italy, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, and on Isle Royale.
Mech is the founder of the International Wolf Center and sits on its board of directors as vice chair. The project to create the facility, which he started in 1985, was a natural outgrowth of his wolf research as well as his ambition to educate people about the nature of wolves that they may come to respect the creature through understanding.
He has published eleven books and approximately 380 scientific papers and 100 popular articles about wolves and other wildlife, including The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (1970, University of Minnesota Press) and Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation which he co-edited with Luigi Boitani (2003, University of Chicago Press). Both books remain in print as of 2017. The 1997 book The Arctic Wolf: Ten Years with the Pack received an Honorable Mention by the National Outdoor Book Award (Nature and the Environment category). His latest book with Doug Smith and Dan MacNulty is Wolves on the Hunt: the Behavior of Wolves Hunting Wild Prey.
