Professor, Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology
Colorado State University
Dr. Barry Noon's research focuses on conservation planning for threatened and endangered species, science-based management of public lands to conserve biological diversity, and conducting viability analyses for at-risk species. His work combines theoretical and empirical approaches to better understand the factors that put species at risk of extinction. Insights from his research have led him to appreciate the important role science has to play in informing the development of land-use policy for private and public lands. The interface between scientific insight and policy formulation entails an acknowledgement of the unavoidable tradeoffs between continuing resource exploitation and nature conservation. His work has been motivated by a belief that sustaining biological diversity is essential to human welfare both in terms of critical goods and services provided by healthy ecosystems and as a source of emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic inspiration.
Dr. Noon's activities also include teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His teaching is motivated by a desire to explain science as a process for gaining reliable knowledge of how nature works and to help students become more ecologically literate. Ecological literacy is essential to evaluate the environmental consequences of personal decisions as well as those made by local and federal governments. Dr. Noon also is engaged in outreach through contributions to professional scientific societies, consultations with non-government organizations, as well as working with his local community in assessing the environmental impacts of continuing development.