Doing His Part in National Parks
Making sure that grizzly bears have a place to live isn't easy. But Dr. Chris Servheen is doing more than his part to conserve wild habitats for these remarkable animals. The Chicago Zoological Society, which manages Brookfield Zoo, recently chose Servheen as the 2008 George B. Rabb Conservation Medal recipient for his 30-plus years of dedication to protecting grizzly bears and the natural areas where they live in the continental United States and Canada.
For the past 23 years, Servheen has served as the Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator for the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. He's found that the biggest threat to the survival of grizzlies in the wild is human development. New construction and highways are quickly eating up large expanses of land that are home to the bears. While it's not possible to stop human development altogether, Servheen is doing the next best thing. He is studying the negative impact that developments have on grizzly populations and working to reverse that impact.
Just how do you counteract the effects of human development? If you're Servheen, you do it by working closely with state and federal highway departments to make sure that grizzly bears are able to safely cross new roads and interstates and, as a result, maintain their present habitats.
He also takes advantage of new advancements in technology to better study and address the changing needs of grizzly bear populations. He leads research projects utilizing unobtrusive Global Positioning System collars. When placed on grizzly bears in the wild, these collars yield a wealth of information about how the animals change their movements and habits in response to human activity and development.