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While growing up, Shawn Stephensen spent hours in the wilds of Utah with his father, a biologist with USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services, and later the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service). The time spent riding in his father’s pick-up truck led to Stephensen’s own career with the Service. From Utah to Alaska to Oregon, Stephensen’s 35-year career has made a difference for wildlife, the people he works with, and the communities in which he lives.
In early 2025, just prior to his retirement, Stephensen was recognized with the Department of the Interior’s Meritorious Service Award, the second highest award that can be granted to a career employee. It recognizes their important contribution to science throughout their career, superior accomplishments in service of executing their duties, and devising new and improved work methods and procedures.Nominated by other scientists, they said that Stephensen represents the best of them, continually pursuing science excellence to ensure America’s wildlife and wild places will benefit future generations.
After graduating from Utah State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Fisheries and Wildlife, Stephensen’s first position with the Service was in Salt Lake City, Utah conducting contaminant studies. He was there four years before moving on to Migratory Bird Management in Anchorage, Alaska conducting seabird studies and managing databases. Stephensen also earned his Master of Science in Biological Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage while working full time. After 14 years there, he spent the remainder of his career with the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex in Newport, Oregon conducting seabird studies, wildlife surveys, and refuge management. Throughout his career, Stephensen has been known for his pursuit of science excellence, working with others to innovate new ways to collect data, and using his expertise to improve the collection and use of long-term monitoring data at national wildlife refuges and across the Pacific.
One of the best tools refuge managers have is data – information that helps guide conservation management decisions to ensure seabirds and their habitat will be enjoyed by future generations. Understanding how many birds live, rest, and nest in a place over time helps scientists and managers protect birds and their habitat. Stephensen has supported research that includes the use of remote cameras, radar, and acoustic monitors for Leach’s storm-petrel monitoring; seabird telemetry and habitat use studies; and coordinated the integration of long-term seabird monitoring data into trends assessments. But collecting data can often be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. To access remote colonies in rough seas requires expertise in boat operations, understanding ocean conditions, and knowing when and when not to be on the water. Other methods of data collection include aerial surveys from small planes or helicopters. During his surveys of the Oregon Coast NWR, Stephensen would hang out of the open plane doors and take thousands of pictures over the course of two days. These photos would then be analyzed for number of birds and species present.
For conservation managers without a lot of staff, capacity to gather that important science can be difficult. Citizen scientists can fill in and round out refuge staff. For the City of Cannon Beach, the future of the tufted puffin is woven into their economic success as one of the only places along the coast where the birds can be easily seen from the shore. To help gather the refuge data needed on tufted puffin’s nesting habits at Haystack Rock, Stephensen set up robust collection protocols and started recruiting volunteers from the community. This program set the template for another successful citizen science program, monitoring white-cheeked geese on and near Nestucca National Wildlife Refuge near Pacific City. These long-term data sets have been essential to making management decisions that help keep geese within refuge boundaries and off neighboring agricultural fields and understanding tufted puffin population changes along the Pacific Coast. As a member of the Pacific Seabirds Group Tufted Puffin Technical Committee, Stephensen’s work has been instrumental in documenting and bringing attention to the decline of tufted puffins, including serving on the Endangered Species Act status review team.
Recounting his survey work in Alaska, Stephensen did not talk about serving on the Pacific Seabird Group’s Kittlitz’s Murrelet Technical Committee or being one of the initial developers of the Beringian Seabird Colony Database, a computerized, GIS-based database of seabird breeding colonies in Alaska and Russia. He also did not talk about his published, peer-reviewed scientific papers, work with universities, contributions to refuge planning documents, or even his expertise as a boat operator. He talked about the first time he surveyed for auklets on St. Lawrence Island.
While Stephensen was recording the hurricane of auklets swirling above the island, one tiny bird stood out. Never before recorded there, the dovekie is a tiny white and black seabird – think murre but small and chubbier. Though abundant in the North Atlantic, they were not known to nest anywhere else. This observation led to the discovery of a small, nesting colony on St. Lawrence Island – about 10 pairs. Though there are thousands of raucous auklets on that island, the wonder of finding a species where it was not known to be was not lost on Stephensen. “Going out into nature, interacting with the birds…it’s an amazing career,” said Stephensen.
Science helps us understand the world around us, helps us protect the things that matter most, and provides the opportunity for anyone fall in love with nature. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the best available science to meet their mission and congressional direction to ensure future Americans can benefit from the natural resources that define our country. Stephensen’s legacy is in that mission, his scientific leadership, the species he helped protect, and the communities he helped change.
