Eric grew up in an Arizona family that loved nature, and he began birding at a young age. Fascinated by the state’s tremendous biodiversity, he has long been drawn to exploring seldom-visited areas and studying how vegetation and ecosystems are distributed across the landscape.
His undergraduate and graduate work at Northern Arizona University, combined with several years of field biology experience, broadened his expertise to include plants, reptiles and amphibians, dragonflies, and more recently, butterflies. Eric has traveled extensively throughout the United States and has made multiple expeditions into Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico, since 2013. He enjoys teaching others about the natural world as much as he enjoys learning about it, and currently works full-time as an interpretive park ranger with Maricopa County Parks in the Phoenix area.
Eric has served on the Arizona Bird Committee, acted as Field Expeditions Chair and a board member for Arizona Field Ornithologists, and was an eBird reviewer for Navajo and Apache Counties. He has also coordinated and assisted with numerous Christmas Bird Counts and volunteer bird survey projects.
