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Dr. van Wagtendonk grew up in Indiana, where he began his study of forestry at Purdue University. Summer seasonal work as a smokejumper for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management convinced him to finish his undergraduate work at Oregon State University, where he received his B.S. in Forest Management in 1963. After serving as an officer in the U.S. Army with the 101st Airborne Division and as an advisor to the Vietnamese army, he entered graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. There Dr. van Wagtendonk obtained his M.S. in Range Management in 1968 and his Ph.D. in Wildland Resource Science with a specialty in fire ecology in 1972. From 1972 through 1993 he was employed as a research scientist with the National Park Service at Yosemite National Park. From 1994 through 2008, Dr. van Wagtendonk was been employed as a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Yosemite. His areas of research have included prescriptions for burning in wildland ecosystems, recreational impacts in wilderness, the application of geographic information systems to resources management, and the role of fire in Sierra Nevada ecosystems.

Dr. van Wagtendonk has written over 100 publications, including book chapters, peer reviewed journal articles, and technical reports; and he was a co-editor of the book Fire in California’s Ecosystems. He has received the National Park Service Director’s Award for Research in Natural resources in 1995, the Forest Service Chief Forester’s Excellence in Wilderness Stewardship Research Award in 2002, the Department of the Interior Meritorious Service Award in 2003, and the George Melendez Wright Award from the George Wright Society in 2005. He was a member of the 1995 and 2001 Federal Fire Policy Review working groups, served on the California Spotted Owl Federal Advisory Committees and the Joint Fire Science Stakeholders Federal Advisory Committee, and was the USGS representative on the Joint Fire Science Program board of governors. He is a founding member of the Association for Fire Ecology, served as its president for three years, and is now an editor for Fire Ecology, the journal of the Association. Although he retired in 2009, Dr. van Wagtendonk continues to write about fire and wilderness.