Steven Courtney
Vice-President for Research

SEI Oregon
Endangered Species, Forest and Bird Ecology, Science and Policy

M.S. Durham University

Ph.D. Durham University England

email: courtney@sei.org

Steven Courtney's childhood was the classic English life of a natural historian. He chased birds, butterflies, and bats throughout the English countryside teaching himself the names and ecology of the country's rich fauna. He gained status in his class when at age seven the bat he had rescued from a barbed wire fence, bit the school teacher that nobody liked.

A field trip through Italy and Germany with Dr David Bellamy his undergraduate tutor at Durham University turned Steven onto ecology and biogeographic comparisons. It was a way for Steven to combine ecology and traveling. Steven's Ph.D. thesis was on butterfly ecology. His work on biogeography and host choice in butterflies has taken him to Morocco, Chile, and Peru for long periods.

Steven is exceptional in that he is well recognized for his novel work on butterfly ecology, bird ecology, and the evolution of host shifts in Drosophila. He has published extensively in all three areas.

In the past few years Steven's research interests have returned again to bird ecology and this time he has combined it with a new setting, forest ecology. He has made significant contributions to forest conservation, forestry planning and the conservation of forest birds.

But today Steven spends much of his time translating science into understandable and usable management actions. His skills at mediation, scientific interpretation, and in finding consensus science-based solutions are remarkable, as anyone who has seen Steven in action knows well. He has given testimony before the Senate, and works in D.C. on science policy issues

In his spare time, Steven paints in the aboriginal style of Balgo Hills.