BLAKELEY ADKINS
THE VOLGENAU FOUNDATION WILDLIFE CONSERVATION ASSOCIATE
Blakeley is the Volgenau Foundation Wildlife Conservation Associate for GYC. She is based out of the Bozeman office and lives 30 minutes east in the town of Livingston. Most of her time is dedicated to the world of wildlife crossings and human-bear conflict reduction in southwest Montana. She also dabbles in wildlife policy and land use agreements.
Blakeley grew up in Seattle where most of her adventures took place on the Pacific Ocean. Although her love for the ocean will never fade, she was always fascinated with the Mountain West when she visited relatives in Butte, Montana. After earning a degree in wildlife biology from the University of Vermont, Blakeley moved to Missoula for the summer as a field technician studying wolves. For the next 14 years Blakeley worked seasonally traveling around North America and researching various species of fish and wildlife including wolverines, pika, grizzly bears, bumblebees, spotted owl, and pacific salmon. Eleven of those years were also spent as a bear viewing guide on the central coast of British Columbia. In 2020 she found herself working for the Tom Miner Basin Association in Emigrant, Montana and decided to finally put down some roots in the GYE. She has been working for GYC since 2021.
While she is not working for GYC, you can find Blakeley foraging for edible local goodies, exploring the ecosystem on foot and skis with her pup Pip, and daydreaming about her next international adventure.
Favorite Greater Yellowstone Animal: A tossup between the sandhill crane and any of the Bombus species (bumblebees).
Book I’d Recommend: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Interesting fact about Greater Yellowstone: The first ancient Native American genome to be fully sequenced was found in Wilsall, Montana in 1968 and is estimated to be 12,700 years old. The remains were from an infant boy from the Clovis culture which is why they are referred to as the Clovis child.
