Staff

• Mail
• LinkedIn

Steve Slater, Ph.D., is the Conservation Science Director at HawkWatch International (HWI), joining the HWI team in 2006. The majority of Steve’s work has focused on Golden Eagles, including the design of research projects, nest monitoring, banding, transmitter deployment and tracking, and drone use. Steve has overseen various raptor monitoring projects for the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Defense, and private entities, including wind energy companies, land trusts, and others. He created HWI’s Eagle Vehicle Strike program in 2016, which has led to multiple reports and publications and a quantifiable mitigation tool for eagles. Steve has also been involved in the conception and creation of the “passive perch scale” to successfully weigh wild eagles and other raptors as part of population health monitoring. Steve has supervised and mentored dozens of HWI staff members during his tenure and has also served on the graduate committee for two former staff members. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Raptor Research and has previously served on the Utah BLM Resource Advisory Council, on the board of Sageland Collaborative, and as the facilitator of the Utah Raptor Working Group. 

Steve grew up in western Michigan and earned his undergraduate degree in wildlife from Michigan State University before heading west to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees in zoology from the University of Wyoming. His master’s thesis was on Greater Sage-grouse use of prescribed and wild burns and was completed in 2003. Steve obtained his Ph.D. in 2006 and wrote his dissertation on issues of scale and bird community responses to riparian cottonwood declines, Russian-olive invasion, and landscape alteration. Steve has had a lifelong interest in birds and wildlife of all kinds and enjoys being outdoors with his wife and three sons while hiking, mountain biking, snowboarding, camping, and wildlife watching. He also enjoys coaching youth hockey and watching his boys on the ice. He finds that silent wilderness meditation retreats are the perfect way to stay balanced and inspired to keep working in the conservation field.