Dr. Marco Festa-Bainchet –

The head of the Biology department at the University of Sherbrooke, Dr Festa-Bianchet is a preeminent scholar in wildlife ecology. The former Chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, Marco’s research has taken him around the world, studying bighorn sheep, mountain goats and caribou in Canada, kangaroos in Australia, and ibex and chamois in the Alps. The author or co-author of more than 250 scientific papers, he was for 16 years the Chair of the Mountain Ungulate Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. In 2022 he was awarded the Ian McTaggart Cowan Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Section of the Wildlife Society for his outstanding contributions to the understanding, conservation and management of wildlife in Canada.

A native of Piedmont, Italy, he holds a Ph.D in behavioral ecology from the
University of Calgary, and a post doctorate from the University of Cambridge

Dr. Kevin L. Monteith

Kevin is a Professor and Wyoming Excellence Chair in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming.  Kevin leads a team of researchers, the Monteith Shop, at UW where their program is focused on addressing big-picture issues associated with the management and conservation of large ungulates, often through individual-based research and intensive field studies to gain a mechanistic understanding of what influences large mammals and how they cope with a changing world. Though their work crosses multiple species of large mammals, a centerpiece of their efforts focuses on bighorn sheep. Some of their long-term, individual-based work has contributed to understanding various aspects of life history, resource allocation, growth and reproduction, growth of secondary sexual characteristics, and behavior.