UW’s Tronstad Receives Professional of the Year Award from Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society

Lusha Tronstad, lead invertebrate zoologist with the University of Wyoming's Wyoming Natural Diversity Database (WYNDD), recently received the Professional of the Year Award from the Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society.

The award recognizes the wildlife professional who best exemplifies the values consistent with The Wildlife Society's code of ethics and makes outstanding contributions to the wildlife profession in Wyoming, in the given year. These contributions to wildlife and habitat conservation include and are not limited to excellence in research, management, public relations and/or policy.

The award, a plaque, was presented to Tronstad March 6 at the annual meeting of the Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society, which was held jointly with the annual meeting of the Colorado Chapter, in Fort Collins.

"The award means a great deal to me both personally and professionally. I am deeply moved that my students and colleagues nominated me for such an honor," Tronstad says. "I love my job and being recognized for something that I love doing is the greatest honor I could receive."

Tronstad says the award honored her career to date, and mentioned the Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society cited her record of publishing; ability to work on a wide array of taxa -- primarily invertebrates -- that are largely overlooked; ability to bring people together; and her passion for working with students to answer relevant questions.

The Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society is an incorporated entity of The Wildlife Society. Its mission is to provide an organization of wildlife management professionals from which statements affecting wildlife can be made exclusively of agency limitations; provide for the exchange of ideas and information between wildlife workers without agency consideration; to strengthen The Wildlife Society, its objectives and goals; to promote and provide for interdisciplinary communication and training to keep abreast of modern needs and technological developments; and to promote awareness of and continued improvement in wildlife management.

Tronstad's nomination was supported by her graduate students; research scientists under her direction; and colleagues from the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Wyoming Game and Fish Department, U.S. Forest Service and multiple universities.

"Lusha has spent countless hours assisting the Wyoming Game and Fish Department with the State Wildlife Action Plan, working with Game and Fish personnel to write and update species accounts, and rank the conservation status of various invertebrate species, particularly aquatic snails and native mussels," says Kevin Gelwicks, assistant fisheries management coordinator with Game and Fish, in his nomination letter. "Since we know relatively little about the distribution and status of these species, Lusha also has designed and led several surveys and research projects to help inform their conservation."

"Lusha exemplifies outstanding, ethical contributions to wildlife protection in Wyoming and beyond, and her efforts have been critical to the protection of so many of the region's critical but unsung species, such as meltwater stoneflies and pollinators," Scott Hotaling, an assistant professor in Utah State University's Department of Watershed Sciences, wrote in his nomination letter.

Tronstad says receiving the award had extra meaning because Nina Crawford, a Ph.D. student in UW's Program in Ecology and Evolution whom she mentors, received an award for the best student presentation at the conference.

"Her efforts have resulted in advancements in invertebrate detection, valuable occupancy data and management recommendations that advance the field of ecology," Crawford said of Tronstad in a note of support. "Her ability to balance multiple collaborative projects while maintaining integrity in her work is unparalleled and she is unlike any professional that I have ever had the pleasure of working with."

Tronstad's research interests are aquatic ecology, pollinators, entomology, malacology, ecosystem processing, nutrient cycling, plant-pollinator interactions, conservation and food web dynamics.

She received her Ph.D. in zoology and physiology from the University of Wyoming, her master's degree in biological sciences from the University of Alabama and her bachelor's degree in ecology from Montana State University.

About the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database

WYNDD offers the most complete source of data for species and vegetation communities of management concern in Wyoming. Its mission is threefold: Identify and rank species that are priorities for management in Wyoming; amass existing data and develop new data for species needing management efforts, and for Wyoming vegetation types; and distribute these data upon request, under the philosophy that the best decisions regarding natural resources will be made only when everyone has access to complete and current scientific data.