image: Mary Rowland uses a hand-held unit to check data from a mobile weather station. view more
Credit: USDA Forest Service
Mary Rowland received the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s 2023 Excellence in Elk Country Award. The USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station emeritus scientist received the honor for her scientific contributions to the management of elk and other wildlife species.
“Beginning with my graduate work in New Mexico, I’ve been given tremendous opportunities to work on projects related to elk that were not only useful to management but also interesting and fun,” Rowland said. “But none of that work was done in a vacuum—my colleagues in the Forest Service, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, and in multiple tribal nations have been essential at every step along the way.”
Among her accomplishments, Rowland helped to establish a connection between elk and roads, showing that the species tends to avoid forest roads that are open to public motorized travel. That work helped inform land management related to road access. She also developed elk nutrition and habitat models for western Oregon and Washington that have since become standard tools, adopted by both the USDA Forest Service and the USDI Bureau of Land Management, to assess landscapes for elk habitat conditions.
In all, Rowland has authored or contributed to more than 135 publications over her career. She received a B.S. in zoology from Duke University and an M.S. of wildlife ecology from Colorado State University and continues some of her research as an emeritus scientist with the station’s Starkey Ungulate Ecology Team.
In its announcement, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation noted that “[Rowland’s] impact on wildlife conservation—linking research to management—and the people who work in the field, reaches well beyond the Pacific Northwest.”