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FWP science program supervisor receives distinguished service award

Inside FWP - Region 1

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Science Program Supervisor Alan Wood at the FWP Region 1 headquarters in Kalispell.

Alan Wood receives award

Alan Wood received The Wildlife Society’s Distinguished Service Award for 2020

Kalispell — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Science Program Supervisor Alan Wood received the Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society’s Distinguished Service Award for 2020 in recognition for more than three decades of exemplary service protecting Montana’s fish and wildlife and their habitat.

Wood, who works in the FWP Region 1 office in Kalispell, received the honor earlier this year after being nominated by several FWP peers, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Trust for Public Land, Vital Ground Foundation, Flathead Land Trust, Flathead Lakers, Stimson Lumber Company, and F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Company.

Under Wood’s leadership starting in 1994, FWP’s Wildlife Mitigation Program developed into one of the top land conservation programs in the country.

In a 1988 settlement with Bonneville Power Administration for 56,000 acres of habitat lost from the construction of Hungry Horse and Libby dams, FWP became the administrator of a trust account to conserve similar habitat within the affected drainages. When Wood assumed the reins of the program in the 1990s, he realized the $12.5 million settlement would not be enough to fully mitigate these losses. He devised a creative strategy to use the mitigation funds and staff time to bring partners to the table to work together to stretch funding resources and time commitments to accomplish landscape-scale habitat conservation.

Over the last 20 years, $7 million of Wildlife Mitigation Trust funding has leveraged $215 million in partner funding that has protected for the public approximately 280,000 acres in northwest Montana through conservation easements and land acquisitions. The majority of these projects have been done with private forest and agricultural landowners where wildlife and fish habitat is protected and public access is secured in perpetuity. Under Wood’s direction, the Wildlife Mitigation Program has far exceeded the initial requirements of the BPA settlement and contributed to more than 40 percent of FWP’s total statewide conservation easement acreage. Over the next two years, another 36,000 acres of northwestern Montana forestland is planned for conservation.

“Throughout his distinguished wildlife career, Alan has always emphasized that partnerships are key and that more is accomplished when everyone works together to complete projects,” Chris Hammond, FWP wildlife biologist, and Kris Tempel, FWP habitat conservation biologist, said in their nomination letter.

“The landscape of Northwest Montana has tens of thousands of acres of private forestlands that have been conserved in perpetuity as working forests that provide multiple use benefits. Most all of those projects have Alan’s fingerprints on them,” Chuck Roady, vice president and general manager of F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Company, and Paul McKenzie, lands and resource manager at Stoltze, said in a nomination letter.

Wood began his career as soil conservationist in Utah with the Bureau of Land Management. Alan took the advice of his professor at Brigham Young University to pursue a Ph.D. at Montana State University researching mule deer in eastern Montana. After completing his Ph.D., he worked for the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation in Missoula for five years where he served as DNRC’s first wildlife biologist. Wood has long been a reviewer for multiple peer-reviewed journals and recognized as a white-tailed deer and mule deer expert.

Wood is the only member of Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society to receive the Biologist of the Year award twice (1994 and 2001). He has also received the 1989 Wildlife Division Award for his mule deer work, 2001 FWP Director’s Award of Excellence, 2011 Montana Wetland Stewardship Award, 2016 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Performance, 2016 Wildlife Division Outstanding Project Award, 2018 Whitefish Lake Institute Stewardship Award, and the 2019 USFS Wings Across the Americas Habitat Conservation Partnership Award.

Region 1 media contact: Dillon Tabish, 406-751-4564, Dillon.Tabish@mt.gov