Naturalist icon Naturalist

Leigh Baker Work

Leigh holds a master’s degree in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies with a focus in international wildlife conservation and protected areas management and completed her undergraduate degree in Environmental Science with a focus on Marine Science at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. Leigh worked as an associate conservationist for the Wildlife Conservation Society and spent 3 years studying the impacts of natural gas development on pronghorn. Leigh worked as an ecologist with the Conservation Research Center of the Teton Science Schools assessing mule deer road crossings and moose habitat in Wyoming. Her work has always been anything but boring as she has hung blood lures in mountain lion research studies, camera trapped grizzly and black bears, remotely weighed pronghorn on buried scale systems, reduced moose-vehicle deaths and was invited to observe the first of the wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Leigh has worked on projects analyzing the reintroduction of Grizzly bears to California, studied tidepools in Oregon and spent quite a bit of time exploring Alaska.

In all of her years in the field researching wildlife she has been approached by a grizzly bear, followed for a day by a coyote, charged by a mama moose (twice), chased by an elk, sniffed by a deer, gracefully navigated a field of bison during the August rut, raced by pronghorn, barked at by prairie dogs, growled at by a mountain lion, startled by thumping grouse, enamored by an unexpected nest of burrowing owls, narrowly avoided a rattle snake strike and is generally enthralled by all that life on this planet has to offer. Her passions lay not only in wildlife conservation but, most importantly, her husband and their twin daughters and son. Leigh looks forward to guiding your next adventure.