Dan first visited the Kern River Valley as a birder in high school in the late 1980s and returned after college in the mid-90s for a job with what was then called the Kern River Research Center. For two seasons, he searched for Yellow-billed Cuckoo nests, and assisted in banding, nest-monitoring, and in the fall, helped launch the Turkey Vulture migration watch. After earning a Master’s in Biogeography (UCR ’99), Dan worked as a program director at Audubon California, serving as Director of Bird Conservation, and writing Important Bird Areas of California. Dan left Audubon to work as an independent ecologist in 2005, but returned to school in 2017, earning a PhD in Biology at UCLA (’20). In 2022, he joined the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains to work full time as a Principal Conservation Biologist. Dan also teaches at Cal State Long Beach (Ornithology) and at UCLA’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability, and has served on several conservation, science and planning boards. In 2016, Dan bought 6 acres with a mobile home near Audubon California’s Kelso Creek Sanctuary, which keeps him connected to the Kern Valley. He and his family are based in eastern Ventura Co. near Thousand Oaks.
Daniel S. Cooper, PhD
