Valerius Geist


Valerius Geist is a Canadian biologist and a professor emeritus in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary. He is a specialist on the biology, behavior, and social dynamics of North American large mammals.

Biography

He was born on February 2, 1938 in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, USSR and raised in Germany and Austria.
He holds an honours B.Sc. in zoology, and a Ph.D. in zoology, both from the University of British Columbia. He completed his postdoctoral studies in Seewiesen, Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology under Konrad Lorenz. His doctoral thesis was entitled On the behaviour and evolution of American mountain sheep.
Since 1977, he has taught at the University of Calgary, where he is a founding member and first Program Director of Environmental Science in the Faculty of Environmental Design. He now resides on Vancouver Island, B.C.

Public work

He is a champion of ethical hunting and a wildlife artist.
He has acted as an expert witness in many areas, including animal behavior, environmental policy, native treaties, wildlife law enforcement and policy, and wildlife/vehicle collisions cases in the United States and Canada. He has testified on wildlife conservation policy in court, before Senate of the State of Montana and before the Parliamentary Committee on Environment, and Sustainable Development in Ottawa.
Professor Geist once supported “game ranching” as a way to use wild animals while preserving them. However, he later rejected the idea and now opposes game farms, in the belief that legalizing the sale of wild game will create an open market on all animals that live in the wild.

Awards

Geist won the Wilderness Defenders Award from the Alberta Wilderness Association in 2004. He is the only North American hunter to be honored with professional membership in both the Boone and Crockett Club and its European counterpart, the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation.

Selected publications