Featured Scientist

The Hope Valley Wildlife Area in Alpine County makes for great hiking in the fall and snowshoeing in the winter. Shelly, who helps manage the area for CDFW, enjoys a fall day there with her family.


Shelly shows off the D3-5 buck she harvested last deer season.


Shelly tags a sedated bear captured in the Tahoe basin. The bear was hazed upon release to keep it fearful of humans and away from developed neighborhoods.


Hunting season is family time for the Blairs. Shelly, her children Jesse and Amy, pose with their spring turkeys.

Shelly Blair is an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) North Central Region. She serves as the unit wildlife biologist for Alpine and El Dorado counties.

Based out of her hometown of Placerville, Shelly’s ties to the local community and CDFW run deep. Her father, the late Bob Pirtle, was a California game warden for 30 years, with most of his career spent patrolling El Dorado County. Shelly’s brother, Sean Pirtle, is a CDFW wildlife officer in Yuba County.

In addition to conducting wildlife research and dealing with a variety of human-wildlife conflicts, Shelly manages CDFW lands in the two counties, which include the popular Hope Valley Wildlife Area, and the Heenan Lake and Red Lake wildlife areas. She holds a biology degree from Chico State.

What was it like growing up the daughter of a game warden?

I tell people I was a Fish and Game brat because it was so much a part of our lives. It was a wonderful childhood. We had wildlife around us all the time. My dad would have to confiscate fawns from people keeping them illegally. He would bring them home and we’d care for them a couple of nights. We had injured wildlife of all kinds. And my brother and dad have been avid hunters. They lived and breathed it – and my brother still does. All this amazing exposure to wildlife and the outdoors propelled us to follow in my dad’s footsteps.

In your job, you must run into some of the same people and families that you grew up with and who knew your father.

I do. I feel very privileged to be able to work in the same area my dad patrolled. These are my stomping grounds. It’s like an extension of my backyard. It is an honor to be investing in the people he was invested in – all the ranchers he worked with and all agency folks he had working relationships with. And now I’m able to carry on those relationships. I’m fortunate enough to have my dream job. This is always what I wanted to do – be the wildlife biologist for El Dorado County. I am very involved with the local schools and the community. I love to mentor students who are interested in what I do, and I try to instill a passion and appreciation in them for the work that we do. A lot of people don’t even know this is a career opportunity that’s available to them.

How did your career with CDFW begin?

It was a long and winding path. I volunteered right out of high school at our Wildlife Investigations Lab (in Rancho Cordova) and had a lot of different experiences there. I held a lot of scientific aid jobs while I was in college. I worked for our North Central Region 2 office. I worked in downtown Sacramento for our Upland Game Program. I worked in our education and outreach branch. I worked with the interpretive staff at the Gray Lodge Wildlife Area, and at the hunter check station at the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area. So when I graduated from Chico State with my biology degree I thought I was a shoo-in for a job at Fish and Game. I think I applied for eight positions – and didn’t get any of them.

But I also applied for a position with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It was the only wildlife biologist position within the entire agency – kind of a trial to interface with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services. And they hired me. So that was my first permanent position. And I’m actually so grateful for that experience because what I learned in that job was so valuable to what I’m doing today with all the human-wildlife conflict. It totally prepared me for what I’m doing now.

I did that for five years. Food and Agriculture lost funding to continue the position, and I had kids at home and wanted to spend more time with them so I quit. About a week later I got a call from Pam Swift at our Wildlife Investigations Lab about a scientific aid job with the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) monitoring program. She told me I could work from home – and that was my foot back into the door with CDFW. That was in 2005. I got a permanent position in the Wildlife Investigations Lab in 2007 and my current job came open in 2010.

What’s a typical day like?

It completely varies. I can have a day all planned out where I am going to focus on a specific thing and then I will get a phone call about a wildlife conflict event or a wildlife welfare incident and I have to respond.

There’s a lot of field work in the spring and summer. All of our unit biologists coordinate and help each other with our different research projects – whether it’s deer darting or helicopter surveys or elk work. Obviously, there is more access to our higher elevation lands in the summer. I attend agency coordination meetings and county Fish and Game commission meetings so that I can remain engaged in the local community environmental issues and enhance interagency cooperation. The human-wildlife conflict work is often what we spend the majority of our time doing.

What kind of human-wildlife conflicts are you dealing with?

Wild turkeys. Mountain lions. Bears. I manage a lot of the South Lake Tahoe bear issues, and it’s one of the biggest challenges for my area. We’re getting more vineyards in my counties so I’m getting a lot more deer depredation calls. I deal with a lot of animal welfare issues because there is a huge wildlife feeding problem in El Dorado County. The result of that is deer getting caught in fencing, wire getting wrapped around their antlers and a lot of deer congregating in certain areas. I’ve had to rescue a lot of animals the last few years.

Besides being illegal, folks are doing more harm than good by feeding the deer?

They are bringing the animals closer to homes by feeding them – and that’s where there are a lot of obstacles they can get stuck in. Feeding encourages animals to congregate unnaturally, causing disease spread, habituated behaviors and unhealthy food options for the animals.

What’s the most rewarding project you’ve been involved with at CDFW?

I have a deer research project that I’m leading in the Crystal Basin area. We’re in the fifth year. It’s the Pacific Deer Herd on the western side of the Sierra. They are a mule deer-black-tailed deer cross. They are migratory deer, but they winter with resident deer, which is really interesting.

It started as a capture and collaring project to figure out survival and mortality, but it has expanded because the GPS collar data have given us great information on their migration, timing and behavior. We are discovering a lot of interesting things about these deer; it’s like pulling back the curtain on an amazing ecological mystery on the landscape. These deer haven’t been monitored since the 1980s, and the technology is so much better now that we can not only see what they are doing but sometimes understand why they are doing it or at least speculate as to why.

So what are we learning about these deer?

Their movement patterns, for starters. Some of them will go from winter range to summer range and then back in a two-week period. These exploratory movements cause an enormous amount of energy expended in such a short time. They spend a lot of time in burn areas and old fire scars. Obviously, there is better feed there and successional growth but how long are they going to keep doing that? We’ve also learned that they die a lot. There is a huge mortality rate for this herd – mostly from mountain lions, but we’ve also had four poaching incidents and three diseased deer.

In all of our many hours trying to dart and collar deer for the study, we drive around in varying areas of their summer range. Most of the time we find the deer hanging around campground areas where there’s a lot of human activity and recreation. So we’ve started to think about that while looking at the high mortality rates. And none of the mortalities ever really happens in those areas. So one theory we have – and I’m not sure how we would actually prove it – is that these deer have learned it’s safer to be around people because there are not as many predators that want to be in those areas.

Other observations are in the more remote areas where you think you would find a lot of deer and where there is just all this beautiful habitat – and we don’t see deer in those areas anymore. It begs the question: Are these deer changing their behavior to adapt to the predators? It’s just really interesting.

Tell us something about yourself many people would be surprised to learn.

I’m a hunter education instructor. I got the idea after my kids went through hunter education and I thought I could create a fun, interactive class. I teach with my colleague Sara Holm. We enjoy seeing the kids succeed and then venturing out to participate in this hunting tradition.

I love to hunt and fish, but I worry that the hunting tradition is dying. I’ve tried to instill in my own kids an appreciation for the entire hunting experience; that it isn’t just about the harvest. It was important to my dad as well. Before he passed, he bought us all lifetime hunting licenses. I’ve had the most precious, memorable times with my dad, brother, husband and my kids while we’ve been out hunting.

When we teach our hunter education classes, there are some people in there who just want their kids to learn gun safety. They are not really interested in hunting. But we really emphasize the whole experience of hunting. Hunting affords you such unique opportunities to experience wildlife and ecology and become part of that natural process. And if you go out and don’t get anything you’ve still had a great day.

What do you most like to hunt and fish for?

I love spring turkey hunting. It’s such an adrenaline rush and beautiful to be outdoors that time of the year. I love duck hunting because there really is no other reason to be up at 2 a.m. to sit in an often wet, cold duck blind other than to watch the sunrise and hear the birds flying and chattering above. I love fly fishing. Unfortunately, my busy family schedule doesn’t allow me to do it very often but there’s just something about the rhythm of it and being on the water.

I haven’t done much deer hunting, but I did get a deer this past year hunting with my brother in D3-5. I’m not a trophy hunter. You can’t put the antlers in soup. I want the meat. There’s something unique about harvesting game that you will consume. It’s delicious and healthy, too.

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Shelly rescues a deer that was tangled up in a rope swing. Wildlife welfare and human conflict issues occupy much of her time.

In 2013, Stuart Itoga became CDFW’s deer program coordinator, which means he is responsible for understanding, managing and conserving California’s deer populations. An avid outdoorsman, Stuart was born in Chicago and raised in San Jose. He holds a degree in Wildlife Management from Humboldt State University.

Stuart first joined the department in 1995 as a scientific aide at the Butte Valley Wildlife Area in Siskiyou County after holding fisheries and wildlife positions with the U.S. Forest Service. He is now a senior environmental scientist.

California is home to both mule and black-tailed deer, both resident and migratory herds that wander more than 70 percent of the state and number about 500,000 animals. At the dawn of the state’s 2017 deer hunting season (the general season opens Sept. 16 in many parts of the state), Stuart shared some personal background and his professional outlook on the state of deer management and deer hunting in California.

Who or what inspired your love of natural resources?

I always liked being outside, but hunting and fishing with friends really did it for me.

What do you like best about your job?

I get to work with so many great people. I work with scientists from other state agencies, and it’s enlightening to discuss different conservation approaches with other agency staff. But working on deer projects with our scientists is the best part. They really care about conserving deer and our other natural resources. It hasn’t all been good, but working together, we’ve been able to do some really good things over the past few years. I like the direction we’re headed.

Are you a deer hunter yourself?

I am – or I used to be, at least. When I started this job as the deer program coordinator, I thought it might help me figure out where the best spots were, but this job keeps me so busy I just haven’t made the time to get out deer hunting the past few years. It doesn’t look like I’ll get out there this season either.

Hunters often remark that California’s deer seasons start too early, and that overall hunter success would be much better if the seasons started later in the year, closer to the rut as is the case in many other states. What do you think?

We could start seasons later, which likely would result in greater levels of harvest that couldn’t be sustained over the long term. This would mean fewer tags for hunters. Having some early seasons allows us to provide tags to a greater number of hunters. Our hunter survey overwhelmingly indicated that hunters prized just the opportunity to get out and hunt deer. So we try to provide a balance of opportunity and high-quality hunts. You may not get the hunt you really want in a given year, but you will be able to get a tag to hunt somewhere.

There are very limited doe hunting opportunities in California compared to other states. Wouldn’t providing more doe hunts not only improve hunter success but also help improve the overall health of California’s herds by removing some older does no longer able to reproduce?

Doe hunts are typically conducted to reduce deer density and negative impacts to the herd and the habitat that result from too many deer. We are currently updating our baseline population data with new methods that allow us to estimate deer populations with a greater level of precision and accuracy. We are assessing where we might be seeing high-density impact at work. There are some areas where the densities are around 12 deer per square kilometer and others about four. The question we’re looking at now is how many deer are sustainable over the long term and what the appropriate levels of harvest – male and female – need to be.

Going back to our survey, 85 percent of hunters supported a doe hunt if data indicated it was warranted. However, having the supporting data and the support of hunters is only part of the equation. In California and other Western states, doe hunts are not widely supported by the non-hunting public, and 37 of California’s 58 counties can veto the department’s recommendations for antlerless hunts.

Mountain lions are another sore subject for many deer hunters. They often get blamed for suppressing California’s deer numbers. To what degree are mountain lions impacting California’s deer herds?

Mountain lions are deer predators as are bear, coyotes, bobcats and people. We’re updating our baseline deer population numbers, which will help us determine the level of significance associated with lion and other predation. Without a good starting number, it’s impossible to tell what impact lions – or other predators – are having on deer populations. In addition to our population study with deer, the department is assessing the mountain lion population, which will also provide valuable information on deer-lion interactions.

I personally think the number of people in the state may be the biggest stressor on deer populations. A population of almost 40 million people has quite an impact on the state’s natural resources.

What’s one message you’d like to share with deer hunters as they prepare to head out this season?

One thing I hear with some consistency is, “There are no bucks.” Our trail cameras and fecal DNA studies, however, are showing us there are.

We conducted a hunter survey a couple of years ago as part of an update of our California Deer Conservation and Management Plan. That survey, combined with the level of effort information we get from the harvest reports submitted by hunters, tell us the average California deer hunter spends about eight days in the field. That’s a good deal of time and effort. So I’m not saying it’s easy to get a buck, but hunters that are consistently successful put some effort into their hunt and also spend time scouting beforehand. If you can get out before your trip and pattern the deer, you’re going to increase your chances of being successful.

Good luck to all of our deer hunters this year! If you’re successful, send me a photo at stuart.itoga@wildlife.ca.gov. (Don’t forget to tag it first!)

Dave Lancaster is an environmental scientist covering Humboldt and Del Norte counties for the Northern Region’s Wildlife Management Program. He has been a unit wildlife biologist for the past 13 years, covering a variety of issues involving birds and mammals including hunting program management, human-wildlife conflict, wildlife disease and welfare, habitat restoration, special-status species protection, population monitoring, research and providing technical assistance to other CDFW programs, agencies and the public.

Dave grew up in eastern Oregon and graduated from Oregon State University, earning Bachelor of Science degrees in both Wildlife Science and Fisheries Science. He has worked as a biologist for more than 20 years, the last 17 of which have been with CDFW.

What led you into a career as a wildlife biologist?

Hunting is a part of life out in rural eastern Oregon, and you start young. This early introduction to game quickly grew into a much wider appreciation for the land and wildlife in general. While there are a number of different jobs that allow a person to satisfy their desire to work out on the land, being a wildlife biologist provides an opportunity to work for the benefit of wildlife and the people who appreciate it.

It is interesting that you have degrees in both Wildlife Science and Fisheries Science. How did that come about?

I wanted to have a career in wildlife management, but most of the work was in fisheries, so I was hedging my bets.

What brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

Early in one’s career as a biologist, it is often necessary to be flexible and willing to go where job opportunities take you. Like many people in other states, my image of California was crowded freeways and urban sprawl. I never imagined I would make a career here, but when a job came up, I took it, figuring I would not be here long. It was a nice discovery for me that California still has a wealth of wildlife and wildlands, and diverse opportunity to work toward making a material contribution to conservation.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

Unit wildlife biologists have such a wide variety of duties that we typically work on several distinctly different issues in a day, and frequently have our plans changed by new developments occurring in any one of the many tasks we cover. I may on a given morning start to design a study, do a survey or prepare a management plan. Then the phone rings and I am being told a bear broke into a chicken coop, a deer is tangled up in barbed wire or a group of birds has been found dead on the beach – and the day just changed.

What is the most rewarding project that you’ve worked on for CDFW?

There are so many rewarding moments in a biologist’s career, it is difficult to pick out one particular thing. There are those projects that are not enjoyable to work on in the moment, but are very rewarding in the end because of the benefit to wildlife they produce. For example, developing habitat improvement projects and mitigation for impacts from development projects involve a lot of time at the desk, in meetings and conferring with folks with differing opinions and goals. Then there are the days when you are out in woods, grasslands or marshes doing surveys or tagging wildlife. You also get personal satisfaction and thanks from the public for helping a particular animal in some form of distress, such as when a deer or an elk is tangled up in barbed wire and you are able to free it up and send it on its way. On other days, you get the opportunity to help a person who is having some type of problem with wildlife. Of course, for wildlife biologists, any day improving the outlook for wildlife constitutes a good day, but if doing so happens to involve watching, handling or tracking animals, then all the better.

What is your favorite species to interact with or study?

The groups of species that I interact with most frequently are game birds and mammals, typically through managing hunting programs, helping landowners who are having conflicts with wildlife and responding to disease outbreaks. I do not have one particular favorite species. It is a diverse and fascinating world out there, with each one having its own appeal.

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to do?

Figuring out how to restore and maintain native grassland habitats while accommodating commercial livestock ranching in the shrub steppe of the Great Basin and in coastal montane prairies would be high on the list in terms of landscape-scale conservation priorities. These areas provide important wildlife habitat but the livestock industry is important as well to these rural communities. Providing for both is the key to success in the big picture.

What is it about the work you do that you would most like us to know?

Unit wildlife biologists, as with staff from most of CDFW’s programs, work every day to find practical, effective solutions to complex problems, and try when doing so to satisfy a diverse range of constituents. We have to be practical because the decisions we make and the work we do often directly affects both our constituency and conservation actions carried out on the ground. We have to come up with solutions that actually work, not just in theory; they must work for wildlife, be compatible with landowners’ desired use of their property and be implemented in a cost effective manner. Take hunting as an example: you need to provide for the ecological integrity of the wildlife population being hunted and the habitats and other species that interact with it, and provide for use by the public both in the form of hunting and viewing opportunity, and use hunting as a tool to minimize property damage the hunted species may be causing on private property.

Any advice for people considering careers in science or natural resources?

Get out in the field and read all the quality scientific literature you have time for. The university and on-the-job training are key components to building knowledge and competency, but a lifelong habit of self-education is indispensable. A broad familiarity with the collective knowledge compiled by those that came before us, tempered with extensive and considered first-hand observations from the field, are what make a good biologist.