James A. Estes

James A. Estes
Born (1945-10-02) October 2, 1945 (age 79)
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materUniversity of Minnesota
AwardsC. Hart Merriam Award (2012)
Scientific career
InstitutionsU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
U.S. Geological Survey
University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC)

James Allen Estes (born October 2, 1945) is an American ecologist and Distinguished Professor at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), known for his studies of sea otters and kelp forest ecology.[1] Born in Sacramento, California, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1967, earned a master's degree in Biology from Washington State University in 1969, and a Ph.D. in biology and statistics from the University of Arizona in 1974. He worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey from 1974 to 2007 before joining the UCSC faculty. He is a wildlife ecologist known for his work on ecosystem effect of large predators on ecosystems. He co-edited the books The Community Ecology of Sea Otters (1988), Whales, Whaling, and Ocean Ecosystems (2007), and Trophic Cascades: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature (2010), and is the author of Serendipity: An Ecologist's Quest to Understand Nature (2016). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.[2] Estes and his work are featured prominently in the 2018 documentary film The Serengeti Rules.[3]

  1. ^ Lubchenco, Jane (18 May 2016). "Ecology: The sea-otter whisperer". Nature. 533 (7603): 318–319. Bibcode:2016Natur.533..318L. doi:10.1038/533318a.
  2. ^ "James Estes". www.nasonline.org. National Academy of Sciences.
  3. ^ "'The Serengeti Rules': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. 8 May 2019. Retrieved 2019-06-06.