OUR TEAM
Jocelyn Akins
Founder | EXecutive director
Jocelyn founded Cascades Carnivore Project as a shoestring effort to address the conservation issues facing rare carnivores in the Cascade Mountain Range. She earned her PhD in Conservation Genetics from the University of California Davis where she focused on the ecology and conservation of the Cascade red fox. Jocelyn loves mountain ecosystems and employing genetic and ecological tools to better understand how carnivores and their habitats are faring in the face of climate change.
Lauren Watine
conservation program manager
Lauren is a wildlife ecologist who has spent her career working on applied carnivore research and conservation projects. She earned her PhD in Natural Resources Management from the University of Tennessee where she examined carnivore community dynamics in a managed forest reserve in Belize, Central America. Her love for wild and rugged places – and the tenacious animals that call those landscapes home – has led her to work alongside scientists, law enforcement rangers, engineers, and archaeologists across multiple organizations. Lauren enjoys applying herself to the many challenges associated with the study and conservation of carnivores.
Gretchen Kay Stuart
Communications Manager | Conservation Photographer PARTNER
Gretchen is a professional conservation photographer who spends endless days each year hiking and camping in the remote habitats of Cascade red foxes and wolverines to track and document their behavior while collecting scat samples for DNA analysis. She photographs wildlife both in-person and with DSLR camera trap technology. Her photos have resulted in impressive discoveries and help us raise much-needed awareness for threatened carnivores and their fragile ecosystems. Gretchen is happiest roaming around in the mountains with wildlife, but when not in the field she also handles communications for the org.
Erika Faubion
community science MANAGER
Kirsten Bailey
community science CoordinatoR
Kirsten coordinates our community science photo program, oversees a 2TB photographic dataset, and manages our wolverine image database. She works with our photo sorter community scientists. Over the years she has helped manage data for a variety of projects, most notably the Wolverine Identification Program. Kirsten has a wide range of scientific interests and currently lives in Arizona, where she will complete her degree in physiology with the hope of joining a medical field.
ALUMNI
Scott Shively
Field CREW LEAD
Scott led many of our field efforts and was the driver behind many research successes. He has worked as a wildlife biologist since 2011 primarily studying montane and forest carnivores, and raptors. He has led raptor migration monitoring sites for HawkWatch International, conducted wildlife surveys for the USFS, and studied American kestrels for Boise State University. He enjoys the challenge of studying mountain carnivores in their remote habitats and is passionate about conserving those wild places and protecting public lands.
Kayla Shively
CARNIVORE COLLABORATOR
Kayla collaborated on several of our carnivore projects. She completed a B.A. at the University of Iowa and a graduate certificate in Wildlife Management at the Oregon State University. She has studied golden eagles and other raptors, and spent 4 years as a Wilderness Ranger for the US Forest Service. Her favorite aspect of her current role is glimpsing the lives of rare carnivores by following their tracks through the snow. For her MSc, she is studying the fisher, a rare carnivore recently reintroduced to the Cascades, at the University of Washington.
Heather Rolph
Field CrEW LEADER
Heather leads many of our field projects, collecting rare montane carnivore genetic samples and setting wildlife monitoring stations. She completed a BA in Organismal Biology and Ecology at Colorado College, and has worked on diverse wildlife projects from live-trapping snowshoe hares in northeast Washington to reintroducing native wildlife in the San Juan Islands and surveying the Mojave for desert tortoises. She enjoys working in remote areas of the Cascades and is especially passionate about studying carnivore poop.
Brittany Bowling
Researcher
Brittany managed our organizational administration, our community science program, and our photographic and genetic collections for our long-term research studies the Cascades Range. She earned her B.Sc. in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the University of Alaska Fairbanks where she spent most of her time looking at marmot hairs. Though marmots will always have a special place in her heart, her real passion is for carnivore conservation. She's excited to work towards that goal as part of our conservation work as she embarks on a M.Sc.
Todd West
Sierra Nevada red fox program coordinator
Todd led our Sierra Nevada red fox program in Oregon. His research interests are in the interaction between carnivores, primarily montane red fox and American marten, and changes in forest structure resulting from both management activities and climate change. He is currently addressing these topics for graduate study at the Oregon State University. Prior to joining the conservation world he worked on large scale simulation with big data at Microsoft.