L. David Mech

Lucyan David Mech (born January 18, 1937), also known as Dave Mech, is an American biologist specializing in the study of wolves. He is a senior research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. He has researched wolves since 1958 in locations including northern Minnesota, Isle Royale, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, Ellesmere Island, and Italy.

Mech is the founder of the International Wolf Center and the vice-chair of its board of directors. The project to create the facility, which he started in 1985, was an outgrowth of his wolf research as well as his ambition to educate people about the nature of wolves, so that they may come to respect the creature through understanding.

He has published eleven books about wolves and other wildlife, including The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (1970) and Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, which he co-edited with Luigi Boitani (2003). His 1997 book The Arctic Wolf: Ten Years with the Pack received an honorable mention by the National Outdoor Book Award (Nature and the Environment category). His latest book, with Doug Smith and Dan MacNulty, is Wolves on the Hunt: the Behavior of Wolves Hunting Wild Prey.

Early years
Mech was born in Auburn, New York, on January 18, 1937, and raised in Syracuse.

Career and research


Mech obtained a B.S. degree in conservation from Cornell University in 1958 and a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from Purdue University in 1962. From 1958 to 1962, he was a graduate student at Purdue, studying the wolves of Isle Royale on Lake Superior. His first book was The Wolves of Isle Royale, published in 1966 by the Department of the Interior, having evolved from his doctoral thesis. In 1966, he studied wolves in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota.



"Beginning in 1986, the legendary biologist L. David Mech spent 25 summers observing wolves..." on Ellesmere Island. He said that his research on the wolves there was different, because it is one of the few places where they are not afraid of people, making that experience one of the best in his life. In addition, there were no trees or bushes to hide wolves from view in the tundra. In the summer, Mech found a den near the military and weather base at Eureka. He witnessed wolf interactions within a family unit and watched them hunting muskoxen; this type of research had not been done before. In an interview, Mech said, "The kind of stuff I got here was not just the objective behavioral stuff, but the kind of thing you get from living with a pet of some sort. You get an insight into the thing. You get to know the animal." Mech and photographer Jim Brandenburg together produced several articles and a film for National Geographic.

Positions on hunting, fishing, and trapping, and wolf management
An avid mushroom hunter and fur trapper, Mech has continued to support fishing, hunting, and trapping, which has led to criticism from animal protectionists. He believes that states can manage wolves sustainably and that states where wolves are no longer on the endangered list should determine how the animal should be managed. On his website, he lists mink trapping as one of his interests. He closed the abstract to "Is science in danger of sanctifying the wolf?", published in the January 2012 issue of Biological Conservation, with "The wolf is neither a saint nor a sinner except to those who want to make it so."

Publications


Mech has published approximately 380 scientific papers and 100 popular articles about wolves and other wildlife. He has written eleven books. These include The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (1970), Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, which he co-edited with Luigi Boitani (2003), and Wolves on the Hunt: The Behavior of Wolves Hunting Wild Prey (2015), with Doug Smith and Dan MacNulty. His 1997 book, The Arctic Wolf: Ten Years with the Pack, received an honorable mention by the National Outdoor Book Award (Nature and the Environment category). The International Wolf Center lists approximately 140 articles written by Mech, published from 1987 to the present, primarily in scientific journals.