Member

Mike was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on September 29, 1941, and traces his interest in natural resources and museums to reading about explorers and archeologists in Junior Natural History magazine, published by the American Museum of Natural History. Mike was fortunate in being able to travel as a child and that also influenced his career choice. Mike received his BS degree in biology at Baker University in 1964 and his MS degree in zoology at Fort Hays State University in 1966. At Fort Hays he worked with Dr. Gene Fleharty, and it was at Hays that he first worked on bats. He went to the University of New Mexico and specialized on bats with Dr. Jim Findley and received his PhD degree in biology in 1973. . After earning his PhD degree, he went to work with the Research Division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a Curator of Mammals at the Smithsonian Institution. He says he loved working with scientific collections, and his research allowed him to travel to a variety of places and to work in many domestic and foreign museums. However, as much as he loved the Smithsonian, he missed the West and in 1981 moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, as a research supervisor, mammal curator, and, ultimately, assistant director with the Mid-continent Ecological Science Center (and its predecessors). From there he started conducting studies of mammals on the Colorado Plateau. In 1993, he moved (back) to Albuquerque, where he became project leader for the U.S. Geological Survey Aridlands Station and curator in the Museum of Southwestern Biology. He also became a research professor in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico. Mike continued his research on bats and other mammals of the Southwest and Colorado Plateau. He has published over 100 papers on mammals and a significant number of these have been on bats. Most recently he published a book chapter on the vespertilionid bats of northwestern Mexico as part of a compendium on mammals of that area. He is a taxonomic specialist on the genus Myotis and lately has been attaching miniaturized radio transmitters to southwestern bats as a part of studies of bat roosting ecology. He is a member of several scientific societies, including the American Society of Mammalogists and Southwestern Association of Naturalists, and is co-chair of the National Workshop on Monitoring Trends in U.S. Bat Populations, Agency Representative on Status and Trends of Western Bats, co-founder of the National Bat Population Database, U.S. Geological Survey, and a member of the steering committee, Bat Conservation and Mining Interactive Forum. Mike was elected to the Washington Biologists’ Field Club in 1977 and for personal reasons terminated membership in 1984. Mike says some of his fondest memories of the Washington, D.C., area were the outings with the Washington Biologists’ Field Club, in particular the spring and fall cookouts on Plummers Island. Mike was known to take a hand at cooking spuds and turning shad, but particularly relished the products of the sour mash, the historical atmosphere of the cabin and island, and the warm companionship with others engaged in similar pursuits and pleasures.