Jeff P. Smith Email & Phone Number

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

I joined H. T. Harvey & Associates as a senior project manager to provide ornithological expertise, emphasizing raptors, especially special-status species such as golden eagles, bald eagles, Swainson’s hawks, and burrowing owls. My focus is assessing and mitigating wildlife effects, developing monitoring plans and conservation strategies, and preparing CEQA and federal permitting documents associated with large-scale renewable energy (wind and solar), residential, and other developments. My experience includes assessing risks to migratory and breeding raptors and other birds from renewable-energy developments; developing and implementing initial constraints analyses, site characterization studies, baseline surveys, bird and bat conservation strategies, eagle conservation plans, and post-construction bird and bat monitoring programs for wind, solar, and electric-utility facilities in California , Nevada, Montana, Kansas, Texas, and the British Virgin Islands; and developing habitat-mitigation plans and management strategies for Swainson’s Hawks affected by solar developments and Central Valley flood management programs in California. I conduct aerial surveys of nesting Golden Eagles in several areas of California, and I have studied the nesting ecology of Burrowing Owls exposed to development of renewable energy. I was instrumental in analyzing data and producing the final technical report for a cutting-edge two-year research project focused on evaluating the effectiveness of several techniques for quantifying movements of nocturnally migrating birds and bats through a large wind-resource area, relating passage metrics to documented fatality rates, and relating passage and fatality rates to habitat and other environmental parameters. I am also currently involved in a tracking study of rough-legged hawks.

I served for 2 years as a Research Scientist and 11 years as Science Director at HawkWatch International, a non-profit organization headquartered in Utah and dedicated to raptor conservation. I coordinated a network of long-term raptor migration monitoring and research efforts in 10 primarily western states. My research emphasized developing effective long-term monitoring strategies and raptor migration/movement ecology, including tracking the movements of more than 100 raptors using satellite-received radiotelemetry. I also developed an extensive raptor nesting study in the northern Great Basin involving seven focal species, and coordinated several projects that addressed human-related threats to raptors. The latter included assessing risks to migratory raptors from existing and proposed wind farms in Nevada and Texas; addressing effects of powerlines on raptors in Utah and Wyoming; and assessing and proposing better management approaches for mitigating impacts to raptors from oil and gas development in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. I published more than 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters, and produced dozens of technical reports associated with this work.

Corvallis, Or, Us

Post-doctoral appointment within OSU Dept of Forest Science, but with work conducted primarily in affiliation with and supervised by USGS-FRESC. In this position, I was the primary author and editor of the Pacific Northwest chapter of "Status and Trends of Our Nation’s Living Resources", a peer-reviewed, semi-technical, ecosystem-oriented report compiled by the USGS Biological Resources Division and published in 1998. For this project, I recruited and coordinated contributions from 17 co-authors to cover all facets of Pacific Northwest ecosystems, including all categories of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, fungi, etc. I was also the Principal Investigator and Chair of a technical team responsible for producing a research problem analysis and long-term strategic plan for the Cooperative Forest Ecosystem Research (CFER) program. CFER cooperators included the Bureau of Land Management, Oregon State University, and the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center. On-going CFER research facilitates implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan and development of ecosystem management strategies for primarily BLM lands in western Oregon. I also managed USGS-FRESC computer facilities while I held this position.

Gainesville, Florida, Us

My PhD research involved a 5-year study at Lake Okeechobee, Florida, as part of larger multi-disciplinary, ecosystem-scale study funded by the South Florida Water Management District and involving state, federal, and academic cooperators. The goal was to generate a broad understanding of the nesting and foraging ecology of ciconiiform wading birds, emphasizing elucidating how surface-water hydrology, climate, vegetation, and prey populations influenced foraging dispersion and nest productivity of 6 common species. This work included extensive aerial surveys of foraging and nesting birds; intensive monitoring of nesting activities and nestling health, growth, and diet; and detailed observations of foraging birds to quantify success in different habitats, followed by prey sampling. I integrated bird data with output from a hydrologic model, annual vegetative cover maps derived from satellite images, and other information on prey populations collected by colleagues. I used ERDAS GIS software to construct and analyze spatial databases, and programmed, simulated, and published an energy-circuit population model for Great Egrets. I wrote/managed annually renewed contracts and budgets; wrote quarterly and annual reports; served as the primary rep at all project meetings; hired, trained, and supervised 10 field and laboratory assistants; and published 11 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts associated with this work.

Logan, Utah, Us

For my Master's research I summarized 8 years of morphometric data from migrant accipiters trapped in the Goshute Mountains, Nevada, and conducted a regional comparison with data from three other U.S. sites. I also measured museum specimens collected during the breeding season throughout western North America and studied trends in morphometric variation using principal components analysis and custom mapping programs. The primary goals of this research were to assess whether size variation could be used to identify the origins of migrating accipiters, and to yield insight about morphological adaptation to varying environments. I published three peer-reviewed manuscripts associated with this work.

Logan, Utah, Us

I taught laboratory sections of Introductory Plant and Animal Biology for five quarters. I supervised field and laboratory sections and assisted with lecture sections of Field Ornithology, Avian Biology, Ecological Vertebrate Physiology, Mammalogy, and Human Physiology.

Phd, Wildlife Ecology

Ms, Biology-Ecology

Ba, Zoology