Bringing Together People and Place in Working and Public Lands in the Greater Big Horn Basin
Jon Jarvis served for 40 years with the National Park Service (NPS) as ranger, biologist and superintendent in national parks across the country. He was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate as the 18th Director of the NPS, serving from 2009 to 2017. During his tenure, he led the National Park Service and its 400 parks through its Centennial, added 22 new parks, achieved its largest budget in history, launched a climate change strategy for the National Park System and help the National Park Foundation raise over $400 million in philanthropic support.
Arthur Middleton is an associate professor of wildlife management and policy. He leads a variety of interdisciplinary research efforts on wide-ranging wildlife and large-landscape conservation, and works actively to ensure positive outcomes of this work for communities. Arthur's earliest work with wildlife was as a falconer and raptor biologist. He later pursued graduate training in environmental management at Yale University, and in ecology at the University of Wyoming. He returned to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow. Arthur joined the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley in 2016. He served as Senior Advisor for Wildlife Conservation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 2022-2025. When he’s not in the lab, Arthur is with his wife Anna, his daughters June and Eve, and their dogs Jack and Lupine. In summers, the family relocates to Cody, Wyoming, where the Middleton lab has a "home away from home" at the Center of the West.
Peggy Fiedler has 40+ years of service in the field of environmental conservation. At the start of her career as a professor of conservation biology at San Francisco State University, she founded one of the nation’s first graduate program in conservation science. From 2010-2021, Dr. Fiedler served as the Executive Director of the University of California Natural Reserve System, a suite of 41 protected areas and field stations dedicated to the University’s mission of research, education, and public engagement.
Laura Bell is Regional Director for LegacyWorks Group at the East Yellowstone Collaborative. Laura made northwest Wyoming her home in the mid-seventies, and since then has worn many hats including sheepherder, ranch hand, federal grazing lands manager, backcountry horse packer, conservationist, fundraiser, and author. She serves her community by facilitating the East Yellowstone Collaborative and the Absarokas Working Group, as well as looking for other opportunities to connect the dots around conservation and community. Laura lives outside of Cody on Sage Creek with her husband, two dogs, and a barnful of horses.
Corey Anco is an ecologist and the Willis McDonald IV Curator of Natural Science with the Draper Natural History Museum, part of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Anco began working with the Draper Natural History Museum in 2017. Previously, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wildlife Conservation Society, and National Geographic Society’s Big Cats Initiative. He also spent a winter volunteering with the U.S. Geological Survey’s wolf-deer project in northern Minnesota.
1/2-Day Discussion, June 21, 2025 Cost: Donation at the door ($10 minimum)
Questions: director@ahtc-wy.org or write to:
Arts & Humanities | Trapper Creek Workshop & Lecture Series
PO Box 204, Shell, WY 82441