Dr. Donald Reid joined the Wildlife Conservation Society in August 2004 as a wildlife biologist working out of Whitehorse, Yukon.  Don’s career spans over 30 years working as a wildlife biologist in the academic, non-government, private and government sectors.

In the boreal and sub-boreal forests of western Canada, Don has studied the ecology of river otters and their interactions with beavers, and the effect of different landscape scales of forest harvesting on the population dynamics of snowshoe hare and lynx.  In the mountains of British Columbia, Don has been a member of teams studying wolverines and mapping mountain goat habitats, and has coordinated environmental risk assessment for land-use planning.   In Arctic Canada, he has studied the demography of nesting seabirds, and the linked population dynamics and ecologies of lemmings and their predators (foxes, rough-legged hawks and snowy owls).  In the eastern Himalaya of Sichuan Province, China, Don has studied habitat selection by giant pandas, and the ecology of red pandas and Asiatic black bears, on a project that was partly supported by WCS.  

Don leads WCS Canada’s conservation work in the Northern Boreal Mountains landscape of Northern British Columbia and Yukon. Working with a team of government and private sector biologists, he has coordinated the conservation priority assessment for the Peel Watershed Planning Commission.  From 2006-2010 he coordinated an International Polar Year project assessing the effects of a changing climate on Arctic tundra food web in north Yukon. The work focused on lemming winter ecology, the competitive interactions of Arctic and red foxes, the timing of nesting in birds, and population biology of raptors. In southern Yukon, he is now focusing on land use planning, and wetland conservation issues involving river otters and beavers.  He is a past member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Bear and Procyonid Specialist Groups.