Member

Damien is a DC-area local, born in Silver Spring and raised in Takoma Park, Maryland. He spent time exploring Sligo Creek down the street from his childhood home and Rock Creek behind his grandparents’ house in Kensington, Maryland. His 7th-grade science fair project examined water quality in Sligo Creek from its source to its mouth at the Northwest Branch. Vacations were camping and canoeing trips all over the northeast and occasionally in the southwest with family and the Boy Scouts. Damien attended St. Mary’s College of Maryland in southern Maryland focusing on birds and behavioral ecology under Dr. Ernie Willoughby. During college he interned at USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in the whooping crane propagation program for two summers. After graduation he worked at Patuxent, briefly as an owl and kestrel caretaker, and then again with the crane program. He was also the lab technician for the crane program and worked closely with Dr. George Gee in the cryopreservation lab. He took part in several field experiments to teach cranes to fly behind trucks and ultralight aircraft and participated in the first ultralight-led migration of whooping cranes in the fall of 2001. At Patuxent he became interested in invasive plants battling tree-of-heaven, burdock, and other plants in and around the crane pens. Damien entered a master’s program in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in 2002 studying landscape ecology under Dr. Dean Urban. His master’s thesis examined piping plover nesting site selection and productivity on various beaches on Cape Cod. After graduate school he worked for two years as a conservation biologist at Audubon North Carolina, managing beach-nesting and colonial waterbird sites near Wilmington, and updating the Important Bird Area program. Currently Damien a wildlife biologist with the DC Department of Energy and Environment. He studies rare dragonflies, butterflies in urban habitats, and leads the DC’s invasive plant management efforts. He founded the DC Cooperative Weed Management Area in 2009, which became the National Capital Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management in 2018. Damien was the coordinator and lead author of the DC’s 2015 update to the State Wildlife Action Plan. Recent projects would expand native grassland meadows and restore tidal wetlands. He has drafted laws and regulations to restrict invasive species and protect endangered species. Damien’s goals for urban wildlife are to protect and restore remnant habitats and rare plant communities to protect rare species in urban settings. He lives in Greenbelt, Maryland, with his wife Rebecca and two teenage sons. He is a founding member of the Greenbelt Biota nature club and enjoys traditional woodworking and carving greenwood into spoons and other treen. Damien was elected to the Washington Biologists’ Field Club in 2023.