Ross Kiester
I grew up in southern California in the 1950s with a passion for turtles and tortoises. By 1960, when I was 16, I had a living collection of 21 species and subspecies. The collection included a pancake tortoise (Malacochersus tornieri), a parrot-beaked tortoise (Homopus areolatus), a black-knobbed sawback (Graptemys nigrinoda) and five kinds of box turtles (Terrapene) all living in my backyard.
At the same time southern California in the 1950s was a wonderful place to be interested in herpetological field work: the coast range, the Mojave Desert, and Anza Borrego Park were within driving distance.
The herpetological community there was small but immensely helpful. Ron Beltz, in particular, encouraged my interests and showed me my first radiated tortoise.
I went to the University of California at Berkeley where I was really able to begin doing herpetology. I traveled to Mexico, Costa Rica, the Lesser Antilles, and the Galapagos Islands with colleagues such as Ted Papenfuss and George Gorman. I worked as Robert Stebbins research assistant and was his teaching assistant in herpetology. After a year in New York City at The Rockefeller University, I ended up doing graduate work in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University under E.E. Williams.
After getting my Ph.D., I taught at the University of Chicago and Tulane University. I then worked for the U.S.D.A. Forest Service. During this time I worked on a variety of turtle and tortoise projects.
Now I am the Chief Scientist here at the Turtle Conservancy and do turtle conservation pretty much full time.
Chief Scientist
49 Bleecker Street, Suite 601
New York, New York 10012 USA
Email: ross@turtleconservancy.org
