EDWIN P. (PHIL) PISTER retired in 1990 following 38 years as a fishery biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. He studied wildlife conservation and zoology under A. Starker Leopoldat the University of California (Berkeley) and has spent virtually his entire career supervising aquatic management and research within an area encompassing approximately a thousand waters of the eastern Sierra/desert regions of California, ranging from the 14,000 foot crest of the Sierra Nevada to the floor of Death Valley lying below sea level. He founded and serves as executive secretary of the Desert Fishes Council and is involved in desert ecosystem preservation throughout the American Southwest and adjoining areas of Mexico. He holds special interest in the fields of conservation biology and environmental ethics and has served on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and of the Society for Conservation Biology. He also serves on the President's Advisory Committee of the University of California's system-wide White Mountain Research Station. He teaches regularly at the National Conservation Training Center (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) in West Virginia, has lectured at more than 70 universities in North America and the United Kingdom, and has authored 74 published papers and book chapters.



DR. JOHN D. WEHAUSEN, President of the Board, is an applied population ecologist who has studied bighorn sheep populations in California for 28 years, beginning with his Ph.D. dissertation work in the Sierra Nevada. In the Owens Valley region he has carried out intensive studies of bighorn sheep populations in the White and Inyo Mountains in addition to the Sierra Nevada. Since 1984 he has also researched bighorn sheep populations in the eastern Mojave Desert. His population studies of bighorn sheep are long-term research projects intended to factor out and compare variables driving population dynamics in different ecological settings. He began as a botanist and plant ecologist and moved into herbivore ecology through in interest in the herbivore-vegetation interface. Consequently, his studies of bighorn sheep encompass a large trophic spectrum from influences of plant communities and plant phenology on sheep nutrition to the predators that prey on the sheep and potentially influence their habitat selection. His studies also have a strong conservation orientation. Beginning in the 1970s, he has worked closely with various resource management agencies to help establish and carry out data-based conservation programs for bighorn sheep. In the past decade, Dr. Wehausen has expanded his research to include cranial morphometric studies relative to taxonomic questions of bighorn sheep. He is now also engaged in molecular population genetic studies of this animal. He founded and serves as President of the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Foundation, is an Associate Research Scientist with the University of California's White Mountain Research Station, and lives in Inyo County. Dr. Wehausen has published his work in numerous journals and is considered the leading authority on the endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep.



Lo Lyness works as a program coordinator in the Education Services Office of the Inyo County Office of Education, where most of her work is providing professional development for teachers. She holds both a multiple subject teaching credential and an administrative services credential. Her background includes many years with  Monterey County's Outdoor Education program as a teacher, site director and program administrator. More recently, in her current capacity, she worked with ESICE in developing and coordinating the professional development component of the Eastern Sierra Watershed Project. In addition to a wide variety of other responsibilities, she continues to coordinate the month-long Inyo County Outdoor Science School, a residential program serving  all the students in Inyo County in 5th or 6th grade.

DEBRA HAWK  graduated from California State University, Bakersfield in 1990. In late 1999, Debra joined the California Department of Fish and Game's Region 6 Bishop Field Office, bringing to the Eastern Sierra 10 years of experience in both the public and private sector. In addition to operating her own consulting, Debra also spent 3 years working in the Mitigation Division for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, traveling the country in an effort to mitigate fire and flood disasters. Today, living and working in the beautiful Owens Valley, Debra most enjoys bringing a 'healthy habitats' and 'resource conservation' message to those who share this valley.