About the Author/Principal Investigator The author retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in mid-2004. During a 37-year career as a fish and wildlife biologist, roughly equal tenures were spent as a research biologist (into various problems caused by birds, including bird hazards to aircraft) and as a management (habitat preservation) biologist. During this career, he authored hundreds of reports and dozens of publications in a variety of scientific and popular outlets. During a five-year sabbatical in the 1990s, he broadened his horizons via brief tenures as a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game; a park ranger for the City of Woodland, California; and as a commercial hook-and-line halibut fisherman in San Francisco Bay and the nearby ocean. The sabbatical period also afforded the opportunity to write his first book How to Guarantee Your Child's Success... and your own, too! (Available in case quantities for educational purposes and fund-raisers from Amazon Books). Throughout his career, he’s had a special love of coastal rivers and their salmonid resources. His first trips to the Gualala River were in the early 1970s. And he’s navigated, via drift-boats of various types and sizes, nearly every Pacific NW river. Also in the 1970s, he became the first oarsman to routinely solo navigate– in drift-boats–some of northern California’s most challenging white water. Among the list were Bluff Creek rapids on the Klamath River, Weitchpec Falls on the Trinity River (where he escaped his first–but not last drift-boat sinking), and several extreme reaches of the Salmon River. Thus, through an adult life rich in river-running and salmonid-seeking this seasoned biologist has arrived at a final, career-culminating work adventure on his favorite river–the Gualala. He’s drawn to the Gualala not only by its sheer beauty and remoteness, but because this unique ecosystem is highly imperiled by a variety of forces. His work on the Gualala also provides the fodder for a concluding chapter to his soon-to-be-published new book. This new book (read some condensed snippets from Diaries of a Mad Biologist) will recount his four decades of waterborne adventures, evolution to environmentalist, and why so many of California’s coastal river ecosystems are–like the Gualala River–highly imperiled. Epilogue: The author retired from his Gualala River Studies in mid-2011 and began pursuit of a long-time dream--flying his own airplane. You can view the videos resulting from this pursuit at his YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/9162069934?feature=mhee