Allen Y. Cooperrider has been a consultant in conservation biology with Big River Associates since 1991. He was educated in zoology and wildlife biology at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Montana, and Syracuse University. He worked for many years as a wildlife biologist throughout the West, including seventeen years with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He and his wife live in rural Mendocino County in northern California on a river to which he hopes salmon will someday return.