Who We Are
In all, there are more than 40 scientists, banders, wildlife veterinarians and pathologists who donate their time and expertise to Project SNOWstorm. Our institutional home, the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art in central Pennsylvania, is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, so your donation to Project SNOWstorm supporting their work is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
These are some of the faces of Project SNOWstorm:
Dr. Trish Miller
Dr. Trish Miller is senior wildlife biologist at Conservation Science Global, and an expert on eagles and eagle biology. With her husband, Mike Lanzone, Trish spends countless weeks in the field each year, in North America and overseas, trapping and tagging large raptors.
Matt Solensky
Matt Solensky is a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota. He has been studying raptors since graduate school, when he spent a season banding migrants at Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN. Matt later spent five years tagging a variety of large raptors — bald eagles, ospreys, Swainson’s and broad-winged hawks — ... Read More
Tom McDonald
Tom McDonald is the founder of Project Snowywatch in New York State, where the primary thrust of his 30 years in the field has been snowy owl migration, ecology and habitat studies. He has worked with more than 600 owls and has been a contributing member of the International Snowy Owl Working Group since 2009. Tom is currently working on ... Read More
Dr. Cindy Driscoll
Dr. Cindy Driscoll became the first state fish and wildlife veterinarian for Maryland DNR in 1999. She is currently the director of the Fish and Wildlife Health Program at the Cooperative Oxford Lab and consults with local, state and federal agency officials on matters of wildlife and aquatic animal health. For 30 years she has provided veterinary services for endangered ... Read More
Dr. Ellen Bronson
Dr. Ellen Bronson is the head veterinarian at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore and also leads the zoo’s field projects and research endeavors. She has worked as a clinical veterinarian at the zoo since 2006. She works on conservation projects ranging from Panamanian golden frogs in Panama to pink river dolphins in Bolivia, but she is also an active collaborator ... Read More
Dr. Rebecca McCabe
Rebecca McCabe’s Ph.D. research at McGill University in Québec used Project SNOWstorm’s datasets (both tracking and necropsy data) to link individual movements to population-level processes by focusing on various aspects of snowy owl winter ecology in North America. Her work also examined how snowy owls respond to relocation away from airports, and survival and mortality rates among snowies. She is ... Read More
Charlotte England and Malcolm Wilson
Charlotte England and Malcolm Wilson met in Africa in 2014 and have been banding raptors together in Africa, Canada and the U.S. ever since. Charlotte is a veterinary technician and her favorite time is winter road trapping for raptors when she can connect with her favorite snowy owls, as she has been doing for the past 12 years as a ... Read More
Falcon Environmental
With more than 30 years’ experience, Falcon Environmental in Québec is a leader in ecological control and management of nuisance wildlife at airports and landfills, as well as environmental consulting, the development of educational outreach programs and endangered wildlife conservation. Falcon traps, bands and relocates birds of prey including snowy owls at airports, and has been a partner with Project ... Read More
Norman Smith
Norman Smith, recently retired as the director of the Blue Hills Trailside Museum, having worked for Massachusetts Audubon since 1974. He began studying snowy owls at Logan Airport in Boston in 1981 and has banded and relocated more than 800 owls. In 2000 he was the first one to put transmitters on wintering snowy owls, proving for the first time ... Read More
Dr. David La Puma
Dr. David La Puma is the director of global market development for Cellular Tracking Technologies, the former director of NJ Audubon’s Cape May Bird Observatory, and an avid birder, ornithologist and conservationist. David received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University where he studied the effects of fire on the federally endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow in the Florida Everglades, and conducted two ... Read More
Dr. Guy Fitzgérald
Dr. Guy Fitzgerald is a veterinarian, clinical instructor at the Faculte de medecine veterinaire of the Universite de Montreal and president of the Union quebecoise de rehabilitation des oiseaux de proie (UQROP). He founded a provincial raptor rehabilitation program in 1986 and treated over 13 000 raptors since then.
Dr. Jean-François Therrien
Jean-François (J.F.) Therrien was born and raised in Quebec, Canada, completing his Ph.D. at Laval University in 2011 studying the movements and predation pressure of snowy owls in the Arctic ecosystem. J.F. is senior scientist and graduate studies director at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, where he oversees research projects on a variety of species and ecosystems. When he’s not monitoring ... Read More
Scott Weidensaul
Scott Weidensaul is the author of more than two dozen books and field researcher specializing in migration. In addition to co-founding SNOWstorm, he is a co-director of Project Owlnet, and has directed the Ned Smith Center’s owl-banding project for 22 years. He is a founder of the Northeast Motus Collaboration, and a co-founder of Critical Connections, a research program with ... Read More
Dr. Erica Miller
Dr. Erica Miller was a full-time wildlife veterinarian and rehabilitator for 25 years and has been on staff at three veterinary schools. She is currently the field operations manager and a senior research scientist for the Wildlife Futures Program. In addition she does some part-time work for the New Jersey’s Office of Fish and Wildlife Health and Forensics, is an ... Read More
Drew Weber
Drew manages the website and crowdfunding campaigns for Project SNOWstorm, and has been with the team from the very first irruption. Drew got his start with owl research during several seasons of following telemetered Northern Saw-whet Owls around southcentral PA from dusk to dawn in the middle of winter. During the day, Drew is the Merlin Project Manager at the Cornell ... Read More
Gene Jacobs
Gene Jacobs is a raptor biologist and owner of Raptor Services, LLC (research/consulting). He has studied Wisconsin raptors since 1973 and banded more than 17,000 raptors along the way. He’s passionate about sharing raptor education, he teaches raptor field techniques workshops for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point outreach program. Gene joined Project SNOWstorm in 2013. He received the “Outstanding Contributing ... Read More
Steve Huy
Steve Huy is a co-founder of Project SNOWstorm, and a co-director of Project Owlnet. He operates the Lambs Knoll station in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, where he bands migrant northern saw-whet owls.
Andrew McGann
Andrew McGann’s “bird jobs” started early, conducting point counts and banding saw-whet owls during high school. He went on to work with chickadees and Cozumel thrashers during his B.S. in biology at Villanova University, and with rusty blackbird winter ecology for his M.S. in biology at the College of William and Mary. He also worked in ecotoxicology, tracking mercury pollution ... Read More
Michael Lanzone
Mike Lanzone is founder and CEO of Cellular Tracking Technologies, which has been a major sponsor of Project SNOWstorm since its founding. With his wife Dr. Trish Miller, Mike is one of the leading golden eagle researchers in North America, and developed the GPS/GSM transmitters we use in our snowy owl research. Snowies are close to his heart, since he ... Read More
Dr. Sherril Davison
Dr. Sherril Davison is an associate professor of avian medicine and pathology at Penn Vet. She received her B.A., VMD, M.S. and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania and is board certified by the American College of Poultry Veterinarians. Her major interests are pathology and epidemiology of infectious diseases of poultry and wild birds.She has been integral part of the prevention and ... Read More
