Yellowstone National Park is world-renown for its wildlife and for having the most intact carnivore assemblages in the United States, but it pales in comparison to its faunal diversity in the evolutionary past. Join us in this 5-day seminar as we trace the evolutionary, archaeological, and cultural history of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem over the past 2 million years, but with a special emphasis on the last 20,000. Through lecture, film, and -- most importantly -- time in the field, you will learn about the magnificent wildlife of Yellowstone in the Pleistocene, when humans were newcomers to North America and mighty glaciers shaped every aspect of life. Topics to be discussed will include the diversity and adaptations of wildlife in the Pleistocene compared to today, how ancient humans lived and interacted with wildlife, the co-evolution of dogs and humans, and how you too can “listen for the language of wildlife” like those who came before us.

About the instructors

Joanna Lambert, Ph.D., is a scientist and tenured professor of animal evolutionary ecology and conservation biology at the University of Colorado – Boulder. She has a deep passion for the natural world resulting in a career spent publishing and teaching about the ecology, evolution, and conservation biology of wild mammals. Her wildlife research has taken her to every continent on the planet though she has spent most time working in equatorial Africa (>30 years) and more recently in Yellowstone National Park where she studies canid biology. One of her proudest recent conservation-related contributions has been in the effort to restore gray wolves to her home state of Colorado, an initiative founded on the science of reintroduction and recovery of wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

Jeff Reed, Ph.D. was born and raised in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in southwest Montana and owns Reedfly Farm, practicing regenerative agriculture and conservation. With a PhD in linguistics and history, he has published on the history of language and humans. He spent 30 years in the technology industry, working on linguistics and artificial intelligence, and now builds solutions that are used by wildlife researchers. He focuses much of his free time interacting with wildlife, practicing paleo-living, researching animal communication via computational linguistics, and living as part of nature. He is an executive committee member of the Upper Yellowstone Watershed Group, promoting the co-existence of people and wildlife…though he considers people wildlife too!