David M. Theobald, PhD (Dave) has worked as a landscape ecologist and conservation scientist for nearly three decades. At Colorado State University, Dave was a professor in the Warner College of Natural Resources, where he remains an affiliate faculty. Recently, he was awarded the 2022 Distinguished Landscape Practioner Award from the North American chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology.
Collaboration is a hallmark of his work. From local to landscape to global scales, Dave works with scientists, decision makers, and interdisciplinary teams from society-at-large, academia, environmental NGOs, public agencies, and private industry.
Publications (Google Scholar, Research Gate)
Biography
Resume (short)
Resume (full)
As a conservation scientist, I have pursued my passion to conserve the biodiversity of our landscapes. I have taught, mentored, researched, and published at a major university, a large environmental NGO, a federal land management agency, and a start-up non-profit science organization. I have collaborated across all sectors of society and have worked to bridge science with practice.
I have recently reflected on how to move beyond how conservation science has often been applied in a mostly reactive and largely un-systematic fashion. That is, conservation efforts typically are in response to broad research proposals, new initiatives developed by agency programs, specific inquiries from clients, or triggered by regulations or laws. These individual efforts are important and necessary, but their impacts depend on past and subsequent efforts, and nested within a broader context. Yet, in practice, conservation must be aligned, sequenced, and coordinated. To address this need, I have re-oriented my work to be proactive, anticipatory, and trans-boundary to achieve scalable solutions.
