Member

John was born on May 26, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He attended Boston University for a year before transferring to the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he completed an undergraduate degree in Anthropology. There he developed an interest in primatology. That field he pursued as a graduate student under Clarence Ray Carpenter at The Pennsylvania State University. He began thesis work under Carpenter’s direction in 1971 at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center’s Field Station in Lawrenceville. He completed the PhD degree in primatology in 1979, taught briefly at George Washington University, and began a postdoctoral project in 1982 with the University of the District of Columbia on a study of urban raccoon biology and ecology that was part of a multi-agency initiative to respond to an epizootic of rabies in that species. He joined the National Park Service in 1984 and served as the wildlife biologist for the National Capital Region of the National Park Service from 1984 to 1995. In 1995, just prior to the closing of the Center for Urban Ecology, he accepted a position as the director of the Urban Wildlife Protection Program at The Humane Society of the United States. John was elected to membership in the Washington Biologists’ Field Club in 1992, served as chair of the house and grounds committee from 1993 to 1997, and served as secretary from 1997 to 1999.