Dr. Fred Cooke

Fred Cooke became interested in birds at age 3 when his father took him cycling in the English countryside. He was educated at Bootham School where he specialised in natural history. From there he went to Cambridge University where he received his MA in natural science and his PhD in genetics in 1965. He came to Canada where, after a brief stint at McMaster University, he was appointed Assistant Professor at Queen's University in the Biology Dept. During the late 60s and early 70s, he was a director and Executive member of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. In 1968 he started a long-term study of Snow Geese in the Canadian Arctic which lasted until 1993. By this time he had been promoted to Associate and then Full Professor at Queen's. In 1993 he was appointed Chair of Wildlife Ecology at Simon Fraser University. This research position, which was set up by the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, was designed to carry out research on bird populations of conservation and management concern to the CWS. Currently, the program has research projects on sea-birds, waterfowl, grebes and shorebirds in several locations in Western Canada. Fred retired in 2001 and now lives in Norfolk, England, where he is associated with the British Trust for Ornithology and the University of East Anglia. Fred is President-Elect of the American Ornithologists Union. In 2001, he was awarded the Order of Canada.