Wendell Gilgert
Wendell was born and raised in Northern California on a fourth-generation family farm in eastern San Joaquin County. Heavily influenced by Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, he began his career with the USDA Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resources Conservation Service) in 1977 as a Soil Scientist. Then for nearly twenty years, he worked as Field Conservationists in Northwestern Nevada and Northern California.
He was Wildlife Biologist for the NRCS Wildlife Habitat Management Institute as well as adjunct professor at Colorado State University and as NRCS California State Biologist. For the final years of his NRCS career he served as the West Region Wildlife Biologist in Portland, Oregon and NRCS National Wildlife Biologist in Washington D.C.
In June 2011, he retired from a 34-year career with NRCS and transitioned to work with the PRBO Conservation Science (now Point Blue Conservation Science) to initially direct their Rangeland Watershed Initiative which is an effort to place, train, and manage partner biologists to help deliver USDA Farm Bill Programs on private land and cultivate Leopoldian Land Stewards through their Working Lands Initiative. He retired from Point Blue at the end of 2020. He stays active by continued training and mentoring Point Blue Partner Biologists, as a private consultant, as a Board Member for Wild Farm Alliance, Science Advisory Member for Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Member of CalCAN Science and Technical Advisory Council.
Wendell has written and co-authored numerous publications and given hundreds of presentations on stewardship, management, land health, and restoration of western working ranch and farm lands to benefit a wide range of fish and wildlife including, shorebirds, waterfowl, neo-tropical migratory birds, bats, herptofauna, native pollinators, and other invertebrates, while at the same time keeping those working lands operations productive and stewardship focused.
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