Jeff Fair, LPC's Director from 1981 - 1991, will speak about his recent and current loon work and writing (bears), and sign his new book, In Wild Trust, at the Summer Luncheon and Auction on June 4th at Bald Peak Colony Club.

Jeff began his loon conservation work for LPC in 1978 on Lake Umbagog in northern NH. A wildlife biologist by formal training (BS Biology, ODU in 1974; MS Wildlife Ecology, UNH in 1977), Jeff has trapped and radio-collared grizzlies in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, worn the badge of a Utah game warden (one career arrest), and introduced snakes to tourists as a USFS naturalist in Oklahoma. Forty years after starting on Umbagog, he has continued to study loons in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, Maine, and WY. Much of the time now he works with BioDiversity Research Institute based in Portland, Maine.

Jeff Fair holds a yellow-billed loon in Alaska.  Photo courtesy of Ken Wright.

 

But his true study of life manifests itself in his essays and books, which ponder the connections between humans and the natural world--with a touch of humor and an uplifting message. In Wild Trust tells the story of how a man with no wildlife training and never the term "Biologist" in his professional title became a world-renowned bear expert. At McNeil River State Game Sanctuary in southwest Alaska--the site of the world's largest congregation of brown bears--sanctuary manager Larry Aumiller spent 30 years developing a "trust" between humans and the world's largest terrestrial predator, the coastal brown bear (blood-kin to the grizzly bear), that has allowed thousands of visitors an up-close and intimate observation of the bears and their behaviors. Much like Jeff's writing about loons, this biography offers a parable about how we might learn to live at peace in our modern wilderness.