Laura was born and raised in Corning, N.Y. She received her B.S. degree with an Environmental Studies Certificate from Ohio University in 1998. The following year she served as an Americorps VISTA in the Sustainable Forestry Program of Rural Action in Athens, OH. During the next several years she held a number of wildlife field positions including banding at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory, Carnegie Museum’s Powdermill Biological Field Station, and Humboldt Bay Bird Observatory. She has assisted with studies of the Louisiana waterthrush, southwestern willow flycatchers, Swainson’s thrush, and Northern Spotted owls. While not in the field, Laura held positions as a biology lab instructor for Salt Lake Community College and as an associate editor of the Proceedings of the Sixth California Islands Symposium for the Institute for Wildlife Studies.

Currently, Laura is working on her M.S. degree at Colorado State University. Her project will entail the application of research on Northern Spotted owls to the development of a community-based forestry program. Working with various stakeholders, a strategy will be created that will accomplish goals of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan: managing forests for sustainable timber production, creation of opportunities and benefits for the local economy, and sustaining ecological diversity, most specifically—a viable population of Northern Spotted owls.

Rebecca grew up near Corvallis, Oregon. She attended the University of Idaho, Moscow, ID from 1994-1998 and received her Bachelor's degree in Natural
Resource Ecology and Conservation. During several summers she worked for the
Northwest Youth Core located in Eugene, OR, and Walla Walla Ranger District, Walla Walla, WA as a wilderness ranger. After graduation, she began working at the Forest Research Nursery, which was associated with U of I. At the same time, Rebecca began volunteer work at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Moscow, ID and in Januray 1999 accepted a full-time biological technican position. In January 2000, Rebecca moved to Fort Collins, CO and accepted a job at the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory located at Colorado State University, working under Dr. Diana Wall. A little over two years later, she took a wildlife biologist position working for the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Flagstaff, AZ. The specific project she workd on was the Coordinated Monitoring, Management, and Research Program for the Rio Penasco Watershed Restoration Project, located in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. Part of this project involved monitoring the Mexican spotted owl. Two summers of spotted owl surveys, small mammal trapping, and vegetation sampling led to a graduate project using 15 years of Mexican spotted owl survey data on the Sacramento Mountains population. Rebecca began graduate school at Colorado State University in the fall of 2003. Her project is titled, "Effects of weather and habitat on territory occupancy rates of Mexican spotted owls in the Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico."

Jeremy grew up in Fond du Lac, WI. He received his bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Management and Biology from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, in December of 1999. Since then, he has worked on several wildlife studies. He worked for Northern Arizona University on a graduate research project looking at edge effects and songbird assemblages in an ongoing ponderosa pine restoration project. He worked for the Colorado Division of Wildlife on their effort to reintroduce Canada lynx into Colorado, and has spent the past six summers on the northern spotted owl population ecology project.

Jeremy began his master’s program in the fall of 2004, after four seasons with the northern spotted owl population ecology project, at the University of Minnesota. His research deals with the effect of northern spotted owl nest tree structure on nest microclimate, and the potential effects that nest tree structure could have on the reproductive output of northern spotted owls. Using heat transfer theory and principles of fluid mechanics, his goal is to understand how northern spotted owl nest tree structure affects the cooling times of spotted owl eggs in unattended nests.