Remembering Ruth Shea

 “She was a force for good who sought to protect the vulnerable, whether that was a person, an animal, a species, or an ecosystem. Ruth spent over 40 years studying the North American populations of trumpeter swans and helping to mobilize and guide the efforts that succeeded in restoring migratory populations.” (from her obituary)

      Ruth and I collaborated and worked on many swan issues over the years. She was a close friend and was instrumental in helping me found Northwest Swan Conservation Association in 2015. She served as our Eastern Washington Swan Advisor. Her legacy is in those with whom she shared her friendship, knowledge, mentoring, and her many written documents on swans. I am blessed to have known her and deeply grateful for her support over the decades.

     In 2015 when NWSCA was formed, I asked Ruth for a bio/resume. Here is what she wrote.

     After studying the causes of Trumpeter Swan nesting failures  in Yellowstone National Park in the 1970s, Ruth dedicated her career to the conservation of Rocky Mountain Trumpeter Swans.  Ruth earned her MS in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana in 1979, worked as a biologist for a several federal and state  agencies (U.S. National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Department of Fish and Game) for over 30 years and served as Affiliate Faculty for the Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID.  She served as the first Executive Director of The Trumpeter Swan Society (Plymouth, MN) 1999-2007 and served on their Board and as their Greater Yellowstone Coordinator for many years.  During her  40+ years of work in Trumpeter Swan restoration, research and management, Ruth has contributed to numerous research projects, management plans  and publications on the Rocky Mountain Trumpeter Swan population.  Ruth left TTSS in 2015 and is now  building a new regionally based conservation program, Northern Rockies Trumpeter Swan Stewards through the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative (Jackson, WY), that focuses on developing lasting private-public partnerships and collaboration  to ensure the secure restoration of nesting populations in the western US and expansion of important migration patterns and wintering distributions. Ruth was a founding member and supporter of Northwest Swan Conservation Association. Like NWSCA, she believes that locally based networks of informed and involved citizens are crucially important to create a secure future for our native swans.