John McDonald
WESTFIELD – Westfield State University professor and Worthington resident Dr. John McDonald is the 2014 recipient of the John Pearce Memorial Award from the Northeast Section of the Wildlife Society.
Established in 1951, the John Pearce Memorial Award is named in honor of John Pearce, former Regional Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The award is given to a candidate who has exhibited outstanding professional accomplishments in wildlife conservation in the Northeast. Criteria for judging professional accomplishment of nominees is contribution of knowledge and leadership over a period of several years in any areas of wildlife work including research, management, administration, or education.
According to Dr. Michael Vorwerk, chair of the environmental science department, the award is well-deserved.
“John McDonald is one of the preeminent wildlife biologists in the Northeast,” Vorwerk said. “He is a gifted educator who infuses his classes with his passion for wildlife and we are very fortunate to have him in the environmental science department sharing his experience and knowledge. Several students have told me that John is their favorite faculty member at WSU.”
Since joining Westfield State in 2012, McDonald has created three new field-based classes: Natural History and Field Techniques, Natural Resources Conservation and Management, and Wildlife Conservation and Management.
McDonald said that after working in the field for two decades, he wanted to pass his knowledge along to students and Westfield State offered the ideal opportunity to do so.
“I wanted to be in a position to influence students and share what I have learned in the course of working with practicing natural resource managers over the past 20 years,” McDonald said. “Our location and ability to access a wide variety of field sites in just a short drive or walk from campus allows me to do a lot of hands-on, or boots on, labs with my courses.”
Previously, McDonald worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 9 years, where he worked in the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program administering over $30 million in grants each year to state fish and wildlife agencies and serving as Acting Division Chief. He was a Bullard Fellow in Forest Conservation at Harvard Forest, worked for the Mass DEP, was a Wildlife Ecologist and adjunct professor at Southern Illinois University, and worked as the Deer and Moose Project Leader for Mass Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
John is currently the Northeast Section Representative to The Wildlife Society’s governing council and founded and coordinates the Northeast Section’s two-week Field Course conducted in cooperation with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife and Castleton State College in Vermont.
When asked who his role models in the field were, McDonald said he admires retired biologist from the U.S. Forest Service Dr. Bill Healy, who he worked with at UMass, for his teaching methods.
“Bill’s approach to working with students and his dedication to our profession is a model I try to use,” McDonald said.
McDonald said he’s most proud of the fieldwork he did in Massachusetts on deer management where he developed a research program to answer the necessary questions to make changes to the deer management system and then also developed and worked within the agency and with its regulatory board to implement the regulations.
McDonald said he was flattered when he learned he’d won the award, especially since it’s only given out on years that the Wildlife Society feels there is a deserving nominee.
“I was surprised and really honored,” McDonald said. “I’ve served on award committees before and nominated people for awards and appreciate the time it takes to put together a nomination. I was really gratified to imagine someone thought that highly of me.”
