Our Team
Dave Stalling
Executive Director
An avid hunter and angler, Dave Stalling is a passionate advocate for the protection of wildlife and wild places.
After serving in a Marine Corps Force Recon unit, Dave earned degrees in forestry and journalism, and more recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing. He has worked for the U.S. Forest Service, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Trout Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation and the Montana Wildlife Federation (MWF).
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He served two terms as President of MWF and is a recipient of the organization's Les Pengelly Professional Conservationist Award. He also served on the Board of Directors for the Outdoor Writer's Association of America, is a cofounder of Hellgate Hunters and Anglers in Missoula and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Wildlife For All.
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Dave spends a lot of time roaming the most remote and wild places in Montana, and writes frequently about wildlife, conservation, natural history and other topics from his home in Missoula, Montana.
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David Petersen
Advisory Board
Lifelong outdoorsman and traditional bowhunter David Petersen has been a Marine Corps helicopter pilot, an adjunct college professor, a magazine editor, and a wildlands and wildlife conservation activist.
Since 1980, David has made his home in the rural San Juan Mountains near Durango, Colorado, where he hand-built the cabin he still lives in today.
David is the recipient of numerous writing and conservation awards, founder of the Colorado chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, former Colorado Public Lands Conservation Field Director for national Trout Unlimited, and served on the Colorado Governor’s Roadless Areas Review Task Force.
Along the way, David has written more than a dozen nonfiction books, all examining humanity’s relationship with nature. Additionally, he collected and edited the journals, correspondence, and poetry of Edward Abbey, and the environmental essays of Pulitzer Prize
winning novelist A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
Most recently, David was the subject of the documentary film On the Wild Edge: Hunting for a Natural Life, by Belgian filmmaker Christopher Daley, available free for streaming here: ON THE WILD EDGE.
In an outtake from that film dubbed “Three Gray Mules,” also available for free streaming on YouTube, Petersen and two fellow hunting ethicists candidly discuss the need for wildlife management reform and related issues: NEED FOR WILDLIFE REFORM.
Kevin Van Tighem
Advisory Board
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Kevin Van Tighem has worked in landscape ecology and conservation for four decades, mostly in western Canada's national parks. His family roots in what is now Alberta, Canada go back to 1875. He has been a hunter and angler for more than sixty years, always on foot and usually alone.
Since retiring as superintendent of Banff National Park in 2011, he has served on the boards of the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Livingstone Landowners Group, and has been active in support of numerous conservation causes.
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Kevin is the award-winning author of fifteen books on wildlife and nature including "Our Place: Changing the Nature of Alberta," and "Wild Roses Are Worth It," selected in 2020 by the Canadian Wildlife Federation for its Robert Bateman Award for advancing wildlife conservation through the arts.
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In 2022 Kevin was presented with an honorary Doctor of Science by the University of Lethbridge.
He was honoured that same year by the Kainai First Nation for his efforts to protect headwaters with a Blackfoot name that translates to Rough Rapid Water.
Andre Marquis
Advisory Board
An avid angler, hunter and outdoorsman, Andre Marquis is a professor of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Rochester. His love of nature has been constant throughout his life, and he has supported conservation organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited for decades. He lives in the Hemlock Hills in the Finger Lakes region of New York with his wife Erica and their dog Juno.
Ted Williams
Advisory Board
Ted Williams detests baseball, but is as obsessed with fish and fishing as was the "real" (or, as he much prefers, "late") Ted Williams.
"I know outdoor writers burn themselves out fast with bile and cheap booze," he says, "but it’s somewhat discouraging when my readers meet me in person and still think I’m the frozen ballplayer."
The surviving Ted writes rare books about fish and wildlife. He also writes articles and blogs about fish and wildlife for low-paying publications.
Often called the "Dean of Wildlife Writers," Ted has had hundreds of articles and essays published in numerous magazines and is the author of "The Insightful Sportsman: Thoughts on Fish, Wildlife and What Ails the Earth."
Carter Niemeyer
Advisory Board
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Carter Niemeyer is retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
He has Bachelor of Science (1970) and Masters (1973) degrees in wildlife biology from Iowa State University. He has been a state trapper for the Montana Department of Livestock, and a district supervisor for USDA Wildlife Services in western Montana managing and controlling large predators.
He was chosen as the wolf management specialist for USDA Wildlife Services covering the states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. In that position, he was responsible for livestock depredation investigation, as well as wolf capture and removal.
Niemeyer was a member of the wolf capture team in Canada during reintroduction in the mid-1990s. In 2001 he was recruited by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to run the agency's wolf recovery program in Idaho, and retired in 2006, coincidentally on the same day that wolf management was officially handed over to the state of Idaho. He also has worked on wolf issues in Washington, Oregon and California, as well as England, Scotland, France and Kyrgyzstan.
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He wrote his first memoir, Wolfer, in 2010. His second memoir, Wolf Land was published in 2016.
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Most recently he served as an advisor on the Technical Working Group (TWG) in Colorado to develop a plan to restore and manage gray wolves.
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Carter lives in Boise, Idaho with his wife, Jenny.
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