I grew up in Tampa, Florida, swimming and fishing in lakes and rivers that nowadays are teeming with alligators. After earning my B.A. in Zoology from Univ. of South Florida, I attended the Biological Field Station at Flathead Lake, MT where I fell in love with mountains, snow and seasons, vowing never to return to Florida. I spent years in Colorado where I learned to Telemark ski, became a technical writer-editor for a software designer and for a hard-rock mining engineering consultancy, and then owned a computer consulting business for 11 years. I sold my business to return to school at the University of Maine, Orono, where I earned my M.Sc. in Wildlife Ecology in 2015, studying the effects of managed forest habitats on the federally threatened Canada lynx and their preferred prey, snowshoe hares, in the north Maine woods. My thesis allowed me to work with modeling wildlife-habitat and predator-prey relationships. I come to Washington from Steamboat Springs, CO where I was a biologist for the US Forest Service. I am excited to be in the great Pacific Northwest, where I can apply my diverse background in data management, teaching, IT skills, and ecology to PNAMP’s mission.
Contact Sheryn Olson: sherynolson@usgs.gov