Services
Grisham Field & Feather is my company, and the work is mine. I am a wildlife biologist. I spent twelve years as a university professor of wildlife management and more than a decade leading funded field research across the Great Plains, the West, and the Gulf Coast, and I started this Company to put that training to work for the people who own, manage, and care about land. My methods are scientific; my purpose is practical: results a landowner, a town, or a small organization can act on, written in plain language and accountable to the evidence behind them. Every dataset, map, and report that leaves this Company meets the test I held myself to as a professor: could I stand behind it in front of my peers, my students, and the landowner who trusted me with the work?
Habitat and land stewardship
I design field studies, habitat assessments, monitoring programs, and stewardship plans for working land: ranches, farms, refuges, and the holdings of towns and conservation groups. I learned the work on land where grazing schedules, rainfall, markets, and the owner’s goals mattered as much as the birds did, and I still work that way, so that a recommendation holds up in both ecology and economics. The animals I have studied include prairie-chickens, Wild Turkeys, quail, Sandhill Cranes, waterfowl, Purple Martins, and songbirds; and axis and white-tailed deer, cattle, and small mammals. I have conducted formal scientific investigations in grasslands, shinnery oak prairie, playas, stock ponds, rivers, coastal marsh, row-crop farms, and bottomland hardwood forest.
Free guide: Pride and Prescription, what makes a good habitat management plan (PDF)
Analytical and data services
Good management starts with good data, and good data depends on disciplined and detailed experimental design. I design monitoring protocols, manage field datasets, build spatial and statistical models, and return the results as maps and reports that stand up in a board meeting, a grant review, or a kitchen-table conversation. The mathematics and the code stay behind the scenes; what you receive is a clear answer to the question you asked, with its uncertainty stated plainly.
The record
I am author or co-author of 40 refereed journal publications, on subjects from nest microclimate to the first annotated genome of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken. I was directly involved in the statistical work on 33 of them.
Grant development and writing
If you have a project worth funding and no grants office to write it, I can help: defining a fundable objective, finding the right program, building a workable budget, writing the proposal, and managing the award responsibly through the final report, so that the paperwork never overshadows the purpose. I write for private landowners, municipalities, nonprofit organizations, and international partners.
The record
Since 2013 I have authored or co-authored 77 proposals; 52 were funded (67.5%), for $7.11 million in grants and gifts for research, conservation, and education. My largest single award was $537,000. My funders include the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Texas Parks and Wildlife, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, Audubon Texas, and the Welder Wildlife Foundation.
Heritage and interpretation
Every farm and field carries a record older than its fences. I document family, community, and land histories with the same discipline I bring to a dataset: oral accounts recorded, photographs and maps organized and preserved, environmental records tied to the people who kept them. The result takes whatever form serves you: a written record for the next generation, an archive your family can keep, an interpretive sign or exhibit that explains how a landscape came to be, or a book.
Education and outreach
I build workshops, field days, and programs for communities, ranches, schools, and organizations that want learning tied to their own ground: how wildlife ecology connects to grazing rotations, water, and habitat restoration. Cropland comes into that only as habitat: I am a biologist, not a farmer, and when a project needs row-crop expertise, I bring it in through the local connections I have, my family’s farm among them. I teach in the field where I can, and I teach so that the people who take part can carry the method on without me.
The record
I advised a student chapter of The Wildlife Society that grew from about six members to more than seventy and was named State and National Student Chapter of the Year in 2022; the Society’s Texas Chapter named me its Educator of the Year in 2018. I have given guest lectures and extension programs for Audubon chapters, birding societies, conservation agency field staff, and veterinary students.
My full record
My full record, with the figures on this page and their basis, is available as a PDF.
Fees
I set fees by the engagement, in writing, before the work begins. As my Company’s operating agreement provides, fees for grant development and writing services may be reduced or waived on a case-by-case basis, subject to inquiry, demonstrated need, and other qualifying considerations the Company determines. If you are a community organization or a landowner with a project worth doing and no budget for the writing, ask me.
How to inquire
To discuss a project, write to me at grishamfieldandfeather@gmail.com. A first conversation costs nothing and commits no one.