Tribute to David Mattson

David John Mattson, June 11, 1954 – Feb. 2, 2025

We are saddened by the passing of David Mattson, a valued member of the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative network. David made extraordinary contributions to the understanding, conservation, and management of large carnivores, and his passing is a great loss to the whole community. 

He is best known for his work with Yellowstone grizzly bears. He was the first to document their seasonal reliance on army cutworm moths, as well as their consumption of wasps, bees, earthworms, fungal sporocarps, rodent-deposited food caches, pine seeds, and even soil. David spent decades studying bears and mountain lions, illuminating their critical habitat associations and relations to humans.

David was a policy scientist, integrating social science and ecological science. He was not merely interested in describing wildlife ecology, but, more importantly, their conservation and human-coexistence needs. In his numerous research and popular papers, articles, and books, he examined carnivores and carnivore habitat use, conflict reduction techniques for carnivores and humans, methods to find common ground for conservation, ethics in science, and suggestions for improvements for university programs.

David’s interest in wildlife and the outdoors began at an early age in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He went on to earn a BS in forest management, an MS in plant ecology, and a PhD in wildlife ecology. David worked in Yellowstone as a bear biologist early in his career, and was a member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team and the University of Idaho’s Cooperative Park Studies Unit. David held numerous positions with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), including Research Biologist and Station Leader in the Southwest, Leader of the Colorado Plateau Research Station, and Western Field Director of the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative. He was a Lecturer and Visiting Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment.

Throughout his career, David worked with non-governmental organizations, universities, and individuals to facilitate knowledge transfer and conservation advocacy. After retiring from the USGS, he worked closely with conservationist Louisa Willcox to support advocacy and legal challenges for grizzly bear protection. Louisa and David co-founded the GrizzlyTimes.org website: an in-depth resource for researchers, conservationists, wildlife managers, students, and interested citizens. He also created the websites AllGrizzly.org and MostlyNaturalGrizzlies.org.  

Here, fellow NRCC Research Associate and University of Saskatchewan Professor Doug Clark shared a recollection of David’s impact on his own work with carnivore-human interactions beyond the USA:

David was a scientific advisor on the grizzly bear study in Kluane National Park, Yukon, which ended in controversy in 2000, and his application of policy sciences theory to grizzly bear management gave me a whole different way to think about the multifaceted human dimensions of bear conservation. He opened my eyes to intellectual traditions I’d never heard of, introduced me to new colleagues and friends, and – crucially for me – demonstrated the challenges of navigating career transitions when ones’ curiosity outgrows ones’ box on a government org chart. At that time Banff National Park’s grizzly bear research was coming under public scrutiny for reasons more to do with societal context than science. David was the first person they called for advice. Rather than simply refuting the critics (which would have been straightforward but ultimately ineffective) he showed my colleagues the value of building a robust process to redefine bear conservation problems inclusively, and bring people into the practice of inquiry. The resulting NRCC-supported effort remains one of the most impactful examples of adaptive governance ever undertaken by a Canadian national park.

David sometimes seemed intellectually superhuman, but his unwavering belief in what Harold Lasswell called “freedom through insight” made him vulnerable in the confines of government work. He had to develop extraordinary acumen about how to exercise his capabilities when the powers that be didn’t see the picture as clearly as he usually did. Show him a conventionally-framed problem and he’d study it, probe its fundamental premises, and then calmly, thoroughly, rationally eviscerate it: laying its assumptions and internal contradictions bare for the world to see. Doing that (repeatedly) had consequences though. For everyone working within large institutions there is an inescapable tension between seeking freedom through insight and navigating the expectations placed on us by the larger social contexts which we operate within. Despite the rewards usually attached to simply advancing conventional thinking, and the sanctions that often accompany other problem definitions, David always sought insight and freedom, remaining wary of what he called “the lure of the conventional”.

NRCC co-founder and Yale University Emeritus Professor Susan Clark worked closely with David on a wide range of projects over the years. They first met in 1978 at the Yellowstone Institute in Lamar Valley that Susan directed. David’s grizzly bear work was widely acclaimed even then, and he became a regular field presenter at the Institute for years. During this time, Susan and David became close personal friends, sharing many ideas, and laying the foundation for subsequent decades of collaborative work. Each felt they benefited immensely from their association with one another. 

In 2007, David took a duty station transfer from Arizona and came to The School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale (now Yale’s School of the Environment) and worked closely there with Susan. David was rich in experience, deep knowledge of science and management matters, and committed to conservation. The breadth and depth of his knowledge of diverse subjects, his curiosity and openness, and his mental flexibility were astounding. Susan will say that this all fit with her very well. Their teamwork was highly productive over the next many years.

They co-taught various seminars and courses together, including a seminar on Large Scale Conservation: An Exercise in Group Problem Solving and Leadership. They worked together to organize a workshop to discuss the challenges and ways forward for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, an effort that David had helped to launch in the early 1990’s, helping to ground the organization in the needed work of conservation, organization, and leadership. Their seminar on leadership, carnivores, and war and the environment were resounding successes, with students from all over the world. They organized the Yale Large Carnivore Group and The Program Conservation in the American West. Scores of students benefited from these initiatives. They greatly appreciated David who was generous with his time with each and every one of them.

David and Susan co-authored ten peer reviewed papers and worked together on a seminal book: Large Carnivore Conservation: Integrating Scale and Policy in the North American West. This book laid out a pragmatic paradigm for conservation and introduced an analytic framework designed to integrate different people in common cause. They also published on cougar relations to people, politics, and management. The most famous paper with David as senior author was Human Dignity in Concept and Practice, published in an international journal. Related work was on Human Dignity and Diversity: Clarifying Standards and Practices. Another key paper was Values in Natural Resource Management and Policy.  

Later, David returned to Livingston, Montana, where his heart, soul, and love beckoned. He put himself into grizzly bear science and conservation and reforming state game and fish departments. His decades of reports and work can be found online in Grizzly Times.

David is missed. He was a principled individual and an exceptional person. Our heartfelt sympathies go to his family and friends who, like us, surely feel the fortune for having known such a remarkable person in our lives as David, and who, like us, now feel the great loss of his absence.

Signed, 

Peyton, Susan, Doug, & Katie

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The following is a reflection on the life and lasting influence of David by NRCC Research Associate, Debra Patla.

Losing my hero David Mattson would have been harsh at any time, but is particularly brutal now in these dark times, with ecological science and mother nature on the run. When the news of David’s passing arrived via Grizzly Times, I had yet to write my comments on the latest FWS 2024 grizzly bear listing proposed rule.  Wanting to just walk outside and grieve, I reached for ‘Flawed Science’ and dove in. I cannot say I did a good job with my comments, but David’s clear depiction of the corruptive social-political context and scientific biases of IGBST and FWS fueled me. I longed for his perceptions of this latest proposal, his celebrations of the good parts (NOT calling for delisting) and warnings of the bad (increased killing).

With Todd Wilkinson’s recent prediction that the IGBST will be demolished goes any hope that the 2024 FWS proposal may have brought us, I fear.  The story of “domination, use, death” that David warned us about fills the heads of those in power. Dare I hold a bit of comfort from thinking that David is at least spared seeing this radical backwards spin? Or is that just my own despair talking?  Pay attention to what goes on between our ears, David told us, seek “respect, kinship, appreciation”. He left us so much. I am forever grateful. The North Star shines.

I met David in 1987, freshly into my first field job in the GYE.  I was hired by the Teton Basin District, Targhee National Forest to conduct habitat mapping of Situation 2 Grizzly Bear Habitat, along with our field crew leader, Ann Harvey, and John Mack. Our job was to map habitat units and cover types over a large area between Bitch Creek and Badger Creek, northeast of Driggs Idaho. The district biologist Lew Becker arranged for David Mattson to come and instruct us. This was a tremendously exciting; we knew immediately we had the best source of guidance not only for navigating the subtleties of the work, but learning about bear foods and ecological diversity. We loved David’s approach, clearly a scientist whose mind was always questioning and learning, grounded in deep experience of real-world places.

The life-changing moment of that training day for me came when we were joined for a short time by the Targhee Forest Biologist. David and this man locked horns over the application of the new (1986) Interagency Grizzly Bear Guidelines. We were standing next to one of the many logging roads in ‘Situation 2′. If my memory serves, the Forest Biologist uttered a dogmatic statement about there being no need to comply with the Guidelines’ habitat management measures, because there are “NO grizzly bears here”. That is when David, so gentle and humble with us, became a provoked bear. I do not recall the words; certainly there was no shouting (nor growling), but David’s direct and fierce confrontation of that facile dismissal of responsibility will always stick with me.  A scientist can do that; a scientist must do that; a citizen must do it; do not back down! The lesson.

As our work proceeded through the summer, we saw what the upper-echelon Targhee NF attitudes had done: huge clearcuts separated by slender rows of remaining trees that had mostly blown down, the soil ripped up after logging (scarification), a vast network of open roads. We learned from the district biologist that he had been muzzled from pointing out that the soil scarification after logging would likely destroy huckleberry production for 100 years into the future.  In not-yet-logged zones we found a diversity of conifers including whitebark pine; these would be replaced by the desired lodgepole pine monocultures, sans berry-producing shrubs.  In the Jed Smith Wilderness, we met up with bands of sheep, and a sheepherder recounting to us “the biggest bear I ever saw, and I didn’t have my gun!”

After field season, Ann Harvey and I tried to communicate to the FWS what we had seen in grizzly bear habitat under Targhee Forest management in 1987.  Louisa Wilcox and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition educated and inspired us (and so many others!) to be engaged and active in bear conservation at every opportunity open to the public.  Lawsuits made the Targhee NF take a new look at all those open roads and start closing them.  Clearcutting greatly declined.  Sheep allotments were bought out by conservation groups, or otherwise went inactive in the Tetons.  And grizzly bears returned to places where they had long been absent, on both sides of the Tetons.

But, as David was telling us all, the wild world was changing fast, faster than the managers and IGBST wanted to comprehend. Forests of whitebark, lodgepole, and spruce turning into ghosts before our eyes; cutthroat trout spawning sites emptied of trout and foraging bears; extended drought, increasing mortality from humans, scientific failings, and political interference.

And here we are now, with the possible loss of the Endangered Species Act along with many other environmental protections.  The revival of Manifest Destiny, and visions that America can be Great Again by taking as much as can be taken. Grizzly bears slaughtered as “trophies” by men who hide a mile or more away.

I do not know what to do with all this grief.  Do you?

It helps to recall my joy years ago when I learned that David and Louisa were together. My two modern heroes side by side, fighting the good fight with love and energy. They will always be together in my heart, walking this trail to make the world a better place.

Debra Patla

Moran, WY