IoE Rough Cut Science:

The Path Back: Fort Peck Tribes' Community Buffalo Restoration Efforts


Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Speaker(s): Dennis Jorgensen, Dr. Elizabeth Bird

Location: https://montana.webex.com/montana/j.php?MTID=m64796145f1687f1cdf1240c5927d7f60


Speaker(s):
Dennis Jorgensen

Dennis Jorgensen

Program Officer, WWF

Dennis Jorgensen has worked for WWF in the Northern Great Plains since 2007. Hired as the programs first field biologist he was based in the northern Montana prairies for 5 years where he gained valuable knowledge of the place, the people, and the wildlife. Before coming to WWF, Jorgensen worked for 7 years as an environmental consultant for the provincial government and the oil and gas industry in Alberta, Canada. In 2009 he completed his master’s thesis at the University of Calgary studying the migrations of prairie rattlesnakes in Alberta. He is WWF Bison & Tribal Team Lead in the Northern Great Plains, which supports the establishment of five herds of at least 1,000 bison on tribal lands and within National Parks by 2025 to ensure that tribal communities thrive with bison and the long-term health of the species is secure. In 2013 Jorgensen was appointed vice-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) American Bison Specialist Group and is currently supporting long-term conservation planning for the species. He has published peer-reviewed research on the migrations of prairie rattlesnakes and long-billed curlews, and he has participated in research on the migrations and movements of mountain lions, pronghorn and mountain plovers. Among his unique opportunities while at WWF, his rattlesnake research was featured in the “Great Migrations” issue of National Geographic magazine and he was interviewed by Dan Rather in the production of a documentary on bison restoration in Montana.


Dr. Elizabeth Bird

Dr. Elizabeth Bird

Project Development and Grants Specialist, MSU

Dr. Elizabeth Bird comes to her collaborations with the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux from a broad background in community-centered research begun in the 1990s in the arena of farmer-driven sustainable agriculture research. She began the Fort Peck collaboration in 2011 under the MSU leadership of Dr. Elizabeth Rink. They assisted Fort Peck Community College and other partners to develop and establish a new Fort Peck Tribes Institutional Review Board. A robust and thriving IRB is now serving as reviewer and top-level adviser on all human subjects related research on the reservation.

Dr. Bird holds a BA in Environmental Studies and PhD in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current position is Project Development and Grants Specialist with the MSU College of Education, Health and Human Development, a position which allows her to continue to foster and conduct collaborations with various Fort Peck partners.

Join Rough Cut seminar online: