Full Name
Leon Kolankiewicz
Job Title
Scientific Director
Company
NumbersUSA
Speaker Bio
LEON KOLANKIEWICZ is Scientific Director for NumbersUSA. He is a systems ecologist, wildlife & conservation biologist, natural resources & environmental planner, and veteran NEPA practitioner. Leon has a B.S. in forestry and wildlife management from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia and an M.Sc. in environmental planning from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
He has worked as an environmental professional for more than three decades in three countries and nearly all 50 states, including stints with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, University of Washington, University of New Mexico, Orange County (California) Environmental Management Agency, the NGO Carrying Capacity Network, a private environmental contractor/consultant, and as a Peace Corps Volunteer promoting tropical rainforest and wildlife conservation in Honduras, Central America.
He has managed more than 100 Environmental Impact Statements (EIS’s) and Environmental Assesments (EA's) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on projects ranging from water supply dams and reservoirs to flood control facilities, roads, parks, power plants, oil/gas drilling, and mines. He assisted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in preparing long-term management plans at 50 national wildlife refuges in many states. He has written or edited more than 500 articles, blog posts, technical reports, papers, conservation plans, and EIS’s and EA's.
He is the author of Where Salmon Come to Die: An Autumn on Alaska’s Raincoast (Pruett, 1993) and Bright River, Dark Dreams: Tragedy on the Rio Platano (Biodiversity First, 2009), as well as a contributor to Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation (University of Georgia Press, 2012) and the anthology of classic and contemporary environmental writing Environment and Society: A Reader (New York University Press, 2017). He has been the lead author of 17 studies on population growth and sprawl and the concomitant loss of wildlife habitat, open space, and farmland for NumbersUSA in the past 24 years, the most recent of which is focused on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. He is currently working on a report examing urban sprawl in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
He has worked as an environmental professional for more than three decades in three countries and nearly all 50 states, including stints with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, University of Washington, University of New Mexico, Orange County (California) Environmental Management Agency, the NGO Carrying Capacity Network, a private environmental contractor/consultant, and as a Peace Corps Volunteer promoting tropical rainforest and wildlife conservation in Honduras, Central America.
He has managed more than 100 Environmental Impact Statements (EIS’s) and Environmental Assesments (EA's) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on projects ranging from water supply dams and reservoirs to flood control facilities, roads, parks, power plants, oil/gas drilling, and mines. He assisted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in preparing long-term management plans at 50 national wildlife refuges in many states. He has written or edited more than 500 articles, blog posts, technical reports, papers, conservation plans, and EIS’s and EA's.
He is the author of Where Salmon Come to Die: An Autumn on Alaska’s Raincoast (Pruett, 1993) and Bright River, Dark Dreams: Tragedy on the Rio Platano (Biodiversity First, 2009), as well as a contributor to Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation (University of Georgia Press, 2012) and the anthology of classic and contemporary environmental writing Environment and Society: A Reader (New York University Press, 2017). He has been the lead author of 17 studies on population growth and sprawl and the concomitant loss of wildlife habitat, open space, and farmland for NumbersUSA in the past 24 years, the most recent of which is focused on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. He is currently working on a report examing urban sprawl in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
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