Meet Dr. Maureen Thompson, Beaver Works Oregon Program Manager
In Summer 2023, Think Wild’s Beaver Works program hired a full time program manager, Dr. Maureen Thompson, to conduct expanded outreach and education, workshops and professional development events, and numerous beaver habitat and coexistence projects on public and private lands in Central and Eastern Oregon.
Maureen has a diverse background having worked broadly in the field of ecology for government agencies, non-profits, and consultancies around the US and abroad. She has worked with taxa from leatherbacks to lichens, but nothing has held her interest like beavers. Maureen attended The Evergreen State College in Washington State and received a B.S. in 2009. She then spent several years as an itinerant field biologist before conducting a meta-analysis of bat mortality at wind farms across the US for a MS at Oklahoma State University in 2015. She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales studying frog ecology using citizen science data in 2023. Delighted to learn Think Wild was expanding, she swiftly returned to Oregon as the Beaver Works Program Manager. She is excited to build relationships and resolve complex issues with the team at Beaver Works.
In her role as Program Manager, Maureen is engaged in planning and coordinating Beaver Works projects and outreach in collaboration with diverse local and regional partners. She is also involved in important beaver-related policy work, such as joining ODFW’s Oregon Conservation Strategy technical advisory team, in which she can advocate for beavers to be considered strategy species for conservation in the state. Maureen is an active contributor to the National Beaver Policy & Legal Working group, an active hub for discussing legislative, regulatory, and policy issues relating to beaver and beaver-managed habitat. She has also joined the National Beaver Funding Working Group, which collects and analyzes successful beaver-related grant applications to assist beaver advocacy organizations and national beaver working groups with funding leads and grant preparation for educational projects, beaver restoration projects, and co-existence projects. She is also participating in a social science study with Oregon State University and United States Geological Survey researchers looking to understand how to support private landowner-beaver coexistence by understanding practitioner communication and engagement.
