Author: Blake Sasse

Dr. Ronnie Marie Sidner was killed in a car accident on August 2, 2014 while returning from a birding and nature festival in Arizona where she had been educating participants about bats by using night vision equipment to show them foraging at hummingbird feeders. She obtained a Bachelors degree from Kansas State University and later attended the University of Arizona where she earned Masters and PhD degrees in Mammalogy.
Sources: EIN News; www.obitsforlife.com

Eric C. York, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service, died on November 2, 2007 died of pneumonic plague contracted after conducting a necropsy on a mountain lion. York earned a Bachelors Degree from the University of Maine at Orono in 1992 and a Masters Degree from the University of Massachusetts.

Sources: Greenfield (MA) Recorder November 13, 2007; KMGH TV, Denver CO November 13, 2007.

Tami Wagner, a wildlife biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, died in a vehicle accident on October 25, 2010. While driving a state vehicle on Highway 20 near Toledo, Oregon another vehicle crossed the highway median and was struck by a large truck which flipped over and hit the pickup truck driven by Ms. Wagner.

Originally from South Norwalk, CT she earned a bachelors degree in wildlife biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1980. After working for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game she moved to Oregon in 1989. She had been an Assistant District Wildlife Biologist at the office in Newport for 21 years.

A 141 acre wildlife area along the Yachats River was named in her honor in 2011.

Sources: Newport (OR) News-Times October 29, 2010. Oregonlive.com

Dr. David S. Maehr, of the University of Kentucky, died June 20, 2008 in an airplane accident near Lake Placid, Florida while monitoring radio-collared black bears using radiotelemetry. He earned his BS in wildlife from the University of Ohio and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Florida. He was among the pioneers in the study of the endangered Florida panther as a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission from 1980-1994.

Source: Tampa Bay Times, June 21, 2008; http://sofia.usgs.gov/memorials/maehr/

Shannon “Bubba” Tunnell, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, died on June 5, 2015, when the airplane in which he was serving as an aerial gunner crashed near Raton, New Mexico while on a coyote control flight.

Sources: Portales News Tribune June 12, 2015;