Fred Provenza
Fred Provenza is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology with the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University. He is a pioneer in the study of how behavior links soils, plants, herbivores, and humans and their collective effects on landscapes. The many awards he received for research, teaching, and mentoring represent the productivity that flowed from warm professional and personal relationships with over 75 graduate students, post-doctoral students, visiting scientists, and colleagues he worked with during the past 40 years.
For the past 40 years, Fred’s team has produced research that laid the foundation for what is now known as behavior-based management of livestock and wildlife. That work has inspired researchers in disciplines as diverse as animal behavior, animal welfare, wildlife damage science and management, veterinary science, ruminant nutrition, human nutrition and biopsychology, chemical ecology, plant ecology and horticulture, landscape restoration ecology, and pasture and rangeland science and management. Along with colleagues and students, he has authored or co-authored over 250 publications in scientific journals and books. He has been an invited speaker at over 400 conferences. His first book was Foraging Behavior: Managing to Survive in a World of Change and his latest book, co-authored with Michel Meuret, is The Art & Science of Shepherding: Tapping the Wisdom of French Herders.
These efforts led to the formation in 2001 of an international network of scientists and land managers from five continents. That consortium, known as BEHAVE (Behavioral Education for Human, Animal, Vegetation and Ecosystem Management), is committed to integrating behavioral principles and processes with local knowledge to enhance ecological, economic and social values of rural and urban communities. They seek to inspire and enable people to understand and use knowledge of behavior, ours and other creatures, to create environmentally friendly relationships that reconcile differences of opinion about how to manage landscapes. In this process, everyone involved is a student attempting to better understand behavior at all levels from genes to landscapes. We use understanding of behavior to help people learn to appreciate that our differences are our strength in sustaining communities and landscapes by integrating diverse ecological, economic and social values and services.
