Member

Dr. Jonathan Mawdsley currently serves as the Science Advisor to the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. In that position, he provides scientific expertise and support to the Association’s leadership, including the Association’s Management Team, the Directors of the 50 U. S. state fish and wildlife agencies and senior leadership of the U. S. federal wildlife and natural resource management agencies. He was responsible for developing the Association’s first-ever Science Strategy, which outlines how the Association can apply sound science to enhance conservation decision-making. He provides staff support and strategic management direction for the Association’s Science and Research and Fish and Wildlife Health Committees, and their associated working groups. He also supervises the Association’s staff who work on climate-change and energy and wildlife management issues. Dr. Mawdsley brings to his work at the Association a strong scientific background, with a B. A. in Biology from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in Entomology from Cornell University, and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution. He has studied with some of the greatest biologists of the twentieth century, including E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, Richard Lewontin, and Stephen Jay Gould. He is author of two books on carpenter bees and author or co-author on 105 publications on wildlife conservation and biodiversity science, in journals as diverse as Science, Science Advances, The Wildlife Professional, Fisheries, Conservation Biology, Journal of Forestry, Journal of Natural History, Natural Areas Journal, Tropical Zoology, and African Journal of Ecology. He maintains an active research program in entomology and biodiversity conservation, through formal affiliations as a Research Associate with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Prior to arriving at the Association, Dr. Mawdsley worked for seven years at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, a non-profit “think tank” engaged in the search for collaborative, multi-sectoral solutions to pressing environmental problems. At the Center, he served initially as a staff scientist for the Environmental Reporting Program, which produced the seminal “State of the Nation’s Ecosystems” reports in coordination with the White House and twelve federal environmental and natural resources agencies. He also served as the programmatic lead on a major project funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to examine approaches for measuring the results of conservation activities supported through the 56 U. S. state and territorial State Wildlife Action Plans. Building on that project, he was promoted to Program Director and led teams of experts and consultants who reviewed and helped improve monitoring approaches for clients including the Bureau of Land Management, the U. S. Forest Service, the state fish and wildlife agencies for the states of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming, and the Navajo Nation Department of Fish and Wildlife. He also developed and facilitated workshops on climate-change adaptation for Arizona Game and Fish Department and for the Navajo Nation Department of Fish and Wildlife. Dr. Mawdsley also worked for six years at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, where he provided staff support and oversight for grant programs on a broad diversity of conservation topics, including invasive species management, imperiled salmon recovery, community-based watershed management, and native plant and pollinator conservation. He supervised operations of the Foundation’s Washington, D. C. grants management department, overseeing a staff of 12 with responsibilities for over $100 million in federal, state, and private-sector grant funding.