Endangered Species Recovery Program

Photo of Phil from St. Mary's College Faculty Profile

Text of presentation given by Armand Gonzales at The Wildlife Society Western Section Annual Meeting in Riverside, CA, Feb. 10, 2011

Raymond F. Dasmann Award for the Professional of the Year

The Western Section of The Wildlife Society presents the "Raymond F. Dasmann Professional of the Year Award" to professionals within California, Nevada, Hawaii, and Guam who have made an exemplary contribution to wildlife management by individuals who have developed, applied, administered or completed an especially significant program of management, education, research or communications that results in an outstanding contribution to wildlife resources in the Western Section geographic area.. The purpose of the award is to define outstanding professional achievements, and to demonstrate to those individuals who make such contributions that Western Section members recognize and appreciate their efforts and the example they set for other professionals. The Dasmann Award is the Section's highest honor for wildlife professionals.

The contributions of this year's Dasmann Award recipient spans a career of four decades and represent important and significant additions to our body of knowledge dealing with Mojave ground squirrel and other small to -mid sized mammals.

He received his B.S. in Zoology from Saint Mary's College of California in 1958 and received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1960 and 1961 respectively.

• Since 1962 to present he has been a Professor of Biology, at Saint Mary's College of California, where he is also the Chair of the Biology Department and Dean of the School of Science and Assistant to the Academic Vice President.
• From 2002-present he is an Adjunct Professor, at California State University, Stanislaus.

Twenty years ago there was an article in Outdoor California on the Coso Project, where he had been looking into the habits of the Mohave ground squirrel, with an eye to mitigating the effects of geothermal development. The study had been going on for three years at that point, and is continuing still. If you dig the article out of your closet and look at the pictures, you'll find that this years winner looks exactly the same as he does today, while you will have managed to age the full two decades, if not more.

Maybe it was the bright optimism and contagious youth of the 200 field assistants who worked at Coso and on similar projects over the past 25 years or so. Many have pursued work in the environmental trades; others are doctors, nurses, veterinarians or teachers. But no one will forget this person's bright wit, his affability, his tireless readiness to explain research protocols in 120 degree heat, his infallible sense of direction, and his encyclopedic knowledge of history, politics, and current events.

He grew up on a ranch in Montana, where the outdoors was not the sacred preserve as we view it now, but a place where real people did real work. He probably saw more wildlife from the back of a quarterhorse than most of his colleagues saw during their years in graduate school. Although his interests are broad - he loves caving, which inspired his interest in bats, the subject of his graduate work -- his library of publications comprises the definitive word on the Mohave ground squirrel. Perhaps no California species has benefited more from the attentions of a single person.

It is a great honor for me now to present the 2011 Western Section's Raymond F. Dasmann Professional of the Year Award to Dr. Phil Leitner,