SARAH MILHOLLIN

left to right: Candace Fallon, Eric Lee-Mäder, Scott Hoffman Black, Brianna Borders, Matthew Shepherd

Scott Hoffman Black, the Xerces Society’s executive director, holds a master’s degree in ecology and a bachelor’s degree in horticulture, both through the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University. He has authored more than two hundred scientific and popular publications, co-authored three books, and contributed chapters to several others, and his work has been featured in newspapers, magazines, and books, and on radio and television. He also serves as chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Butterfly Specialist Group, chair of the Migratory Dragonfly Partnership, co-chair of the Monarch Joint Venture, and deputy chair of the IUCN Invertebrate Conservation Subcommittee. Scott has received the 2011 Colorado State University College of Agricultural Sciences Honor Alumnus Award and the U.S. Forest Service Wings Across the Americas 2012 Butterfly Conservation Award, among other awards.

Brianna Borders was the Xerces Society’s plant ecologist from 2010 to 2015 and helped launch Project Milkweed, a nationwide initiative to promote milkweed conservation and increase milkweed seed availability for use in monarch butterfly and pollinator habitat restoration projects. Brianna has a master’s degree in biological sciences from California State University, Chico, where her research focused on the restoration of riparian forests on the Sacramento River. She has also managed a native plant seed production program in California’s San Joaquin Valley, taught biology at Bunker Hill Community College and Clark College, and assisted with plant-based ecological research on Nantucket Island and at Mount St. Helens.

Candace Fallon, conservation biologist for the Endangered Species Program at the Xerces Society, has worked for more than a decade in field ecology, botany, and land management throughout the western United States. She manages several aspects of Xerces’ Western Monarch Conservation Campaign, including the Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count, a citizen science program based in California. She has extensive experience in habitat restoration and species inventories and monitoring.

Eric Lee-Mäder, M.S., is co-director of the Pollinator Conservation Program at the Xerces Society. In this role Eric works across the world with farmers and agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to enhance functional biodiversity in working agricultural lands. This includes consulting support for a USDA private lands conservation program targeting the federally endangered Karner blue butterfly. He previously worked as an extension farm educator, a commercial beekeeper, and a crop consultant for the native seed industry. Eric is the co-author of several books including the best-selling Attracting Native Pollinators, and Farming with Beneficial Insects: Strategies for Ecological Pest Management.

Matthew Shepherd has been with the Xerces Society since 1999, currently serving as the communications director and previously working on the Pollinator Conservation Program. Matthew has authored or co-authored numerous articles and other publications, including the Xerces Society’s Pollinator Conservation Handbook and Attracting Native Pollinators. Before joining Xerces, Matthew worked in both England and Kenya on community-based conservation programs and with partners in business and the local community to manage Samphire Hoe, an award-winning nature park in Kent. Matthew started gardening at his mother’s side and has created and maintained gardens that provide for insects and other wildlife everywhere he has lived.

Robert Michael Pyle (foreword) founded the Xerces Society in 1971 while studying butterfly conservation as a Fulbright Scholar in England. He holds a PhD in butterfly eco-geography from Yale University. His eighteen books include The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies, The Butterfly Watcher’s Handbook, The Butterflies of Cascadia, Chasing Monarchs, and Mariposa Road.