Mike grew up in the woods of southern Connecticut in the town of Deep River and served on the board of his hometown land trust for 10 years. Mike has led research teams studying bird and plant communities on seabird islands in the Gulf of Maine with National Audubon, in the salt marshes around Long Island Sound with UConn, and in the beech-maple-birch forests of the Adirondack Mountains. He co-directed the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s (ESF) 1,000-acre Cranberry Lake Biological Station in 2019.

Mike has been teaching nature lovers of all ages since 2007, in wilderness survival early in his career, and then in field ecology and natural history as a university instructor and volunteer. He is also passionate about public policy, most recently analyzing ecological security issues with the Council on Strategic Risks.

Mike holds a BA in Biology and Global Studies from Colby College in Maine, a MA in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and a PhD in Conservation Biology from SUNY ESF. For his PhD, Mike investigated how drivers of global environmental change such as acid rain, climate change, and invasive species may impact temperate hardwood forests.