Dr. Joanna Lambert is a Professor of animal ecology at the University of Colorado – Boulder, Director of the American Canid Project, Senior Science Advisor to the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, and a driving force in the effort to reintroduce gray wolves to Colorado – an initiative founded on the science of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park. Professor Lambert has over 35 years of boots-on-the-ground field research and conservation experience on endangered mammal species worldwide, especially in equatorial Africa (on great apes) and, more recently, in the American West, including Yellowstone (on canids). She is a member of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and an advisor to the United Nations Environmental Programme. Lambert has published several books and hundreds of peer-reviewed science articles on her research.

For her efforts, she has been elected as a Fellow of the Explorers Club, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London – the institution where Charles Darwin first presented his theory of evolution.

In this talk, entitled Gray Wolves and Humans in Deep Time, Recent History, and Now, Professor Lambert will draw from her experience as an evolutionary biologist and field scientist to shed light on one of the most iconic species in the Northern Hemisphere – Canis lupus. Weaving together insights from the fossil record, human history, and recent conservation work in the American West, this lecture represents an opportunity to learn about one of the oldest, most complicated, and most profound relationships humans have with another species, thereby providing an evolutionary lens by which to celebrate the significance and legacy of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park.

Lambert’s lecture is free and open to the public. It is the third in a series, The Epic Story of Humans, Wildlife and Landforms in Park County: A Guide for Stewardship of our Ecosystem, presented by the Yellowstone Gateway Museum Foundation in association with the Park County Environmental Council, the Park County Community Foundation, the Tom Miner Basin Association, Yellowstone Forever, and Elk River Arts & Lectures. Each installment includes a lecture to take place at the Shane Lalani Center for the Arts, a visit to local schools, and an exhibition at the Yellowstone Gateway Museum. 

Scott W. Dersam is the Founder, principal investigator, and principal researcher of the Alpine Ecosystems Research Institute (AERI), formerly the Beartooth Ecosystems Alpine Archaeological Research (BEAAR) Project. Scott holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Montana and an M.A. from the University of Wyoming.

Dersam has years of experience in archaeological research, spanning the foothills and mountains of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the High Plains, the Great Basin, and Yellowstone National Park. Dersam has taught at the University of Montana and currently teaches archaeology and anthropology at Montana State University. He has worked for multiple cultural resource management firms and the USDA Forest Service in Wyoming.

Dersam’s field and laboratory research specializes in high-elevation North American hunter-gatherer settlement patterning, alpine occupation duration, spatial statistical modeling, Pleistocene landscapes, and the evolving cultural mountain adaptations of the Rocky Mountains. Scott has supervised public and professional archaeological research efforts in the mountain ranges of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, focusing primarily on the Beartooth Wilderness of Montana since 2018. Dersam’s research has appeared in a special issue of The Journal of Hunter-Gatherer Research (2023), which he guest edited, as well as the National Forest Overview of the Gallatin National Forest (2023).

In his lecture, Dersam will discuss his archaeological work in alpine regions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is helping to rewrite our understanding of the Clovis culture and prehistoric occupation of our community.

Dersam’s lecture is free and open to the public. It is the second in a series, The Epic Story of Humans, Wildlife and Landforms in Park County: A Guide for Stewardship of our Ecosystem, presented by the Yellowstone Gateway Museum Foundation in association with the Park County Environmental Council, the Park County Community Foundation, the Tom Miner Basin Association, Yellowstone Forever, and Elk River Arts & Lectures. Each installment includes a lecture to take place at the Shane Lalani Center for the Arts, a visit to local schools, and an exhibition at the Yellowstone Gateway Museum. During his visit, Dersam will speak with students at East Side Elementary.

Abe Streep is the author of Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana (Celadon Books), winner of the Montana Book Award and the New Mexico-Arizona General Nonfiction Book Award. The book is rooted in the community of Arlee, on the Flathead Indian Reservation, home to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The New York Times called it “an immersive portrait of a small tribal town where shared history runs deep, opportunity feels elusive, and basketball is a visceral expression of collective pride, hope, and grit.” Debra Magpie Earling wrote, “Brothers on Three captures the roar of a community spirit powered by blood history, loyalty, and ferocious love.”

Abe writes for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, ProPublica, and Outside, where he is a contributing editor. In 2019, he received the American Mosaic Journalism Prize for deep reporting about underrepresented communities. He also works as a freelance editor and has taught at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and the University of Wyoming’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources.

Tailyr Irvine is a Salish and Kootenai journalist born and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. Her work focuses on providing in-depth representations of the lives and complex issues within the diverse communities that make up Native America.

Tailyr is a co-founder of Indigenous Photograph, a global database dedicated to support the media industry in hiring more Indigenous photographers to tell the stories of their communities and to reflect on how we tell these stories. She contributes to The New York Times and National Geographic. In 2023, Tailyr received a Vital Impacts Environmental Photography Grant.

The 2024 Elk River Arts & Lectures Lecture Series is made possible by the generous support of the Park County Community Foundation, the Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and individual donors.