Jeff Fair
Alum 2005
Freelance field biologist and author Jeff Fair has made Alaska his home since 1995. He started fieldwork with Common Loons in New Hampshire in 1978 and directed the NH loon recovery project from 1981 through 1991. From 1984 to 1996, he monitored loon populations, productivity, and management on hydroelectric reservoirs in northern New Hampshire and central Maine as an independent consulting biologist. He has studied and written about loons (and other wild spirits) from Maine to Alaska for 35 years.
In 2002, he coauthored Audubon Alaska’s Western Arctic Summary and Synthesis of Resources (pertaining to the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska) and published his Status and Significance of Yellow-billed Loons in Alaska (The Wilderness Society). The latter report launched his fieldwork with Yellow-billed Loons in Arctic Alaska and led to the species’ current “warranted” status for ESA listing.
In recent years, Jeff has divided his summer fieldwork between BRI’s efforts in Maine, Wyoming, and Alaska, and as part of a USGS Yellow-billed Loon study team in Alaskan and Canadian Arctic regions.
Jeff writes in the loft of his quiet little cabin on Lazy Mountain, across the river from Palmer. His essays have appeared in Audubon magazine, Alaska magazine, Natural History, The Christian Science Monitor, Equinox, Ranger Rick, and Appalachia, where he is a contributing editor.
His articles and stories about loons have been anthologized in Loons: Song of the Wild (Voyageur Press 1996), Arctic Wings (The Mountaineers Books 2006), Arctic Voices (Seven Stories Press 2012), and On Arctic Ground (Braided River 2012). Jeff has received the National Press Club’s Travel Journalism Award and the National Wildlife Federation’s Farrand/Strohm Writing Award.