Copyright 2009 Nostalgia Coffee.
Thomas Sharp:
Thomas Sharp is a wildlife ecologist with more than 15 years of experience in natural history research. His professional and academic work focuses on community and island ecology, wildlife/habitat relations, and conservation biology. He has worked in a variety of settings within the United States including Alaska, Florida, the Intermountain West, the Northwest Coast and the Southwest regions. He has also worked in many international locations including the Micronesian islands (Guam, Rota and Saipan) Taiwan, India and Southeast Asia.
During his professional career Thomas has worked with and done surveys for a great variety of species including brown tree snakes, the Mariana crow, sea turtles, nesting and migrating raptors, northern goshawks, flammulated owls, Mexican spotted owls, scops owls, prairie dogs, mule deer, elk, southwestern willow flycatchers, burrowing owls and black-footed ferret to name just a few. He presently works for SWCA environmental consultants is Salt Lake City, http://swca.com/ . His work for SWCA has him working on everything from southwest willow flycatchers in riparian corridors of the Mojave Desert to brown bears in Southeast Alaska.
The last seven years Mr. Sharp has been increasingly focusing on bear research and conservation. During this time he has been working with an Indian non-profit group called Wildlife SOS http://www.wildlifesos.org/. His focus is on the conservation of sloth bears and Asiatic black bears through scientific research. Ongoing studies include Asiatic black bear / human conflicts in Kashmir India, sloth bear / human conflicts in Hampi India and sloth bear natural history, including sloth bear / tiger interactions, in southern India. His work with sloth bears got him appointed to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Species Survival Commission (SSC), http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/species/about_ssc/, Sloth Bear Expert Team which is part of the Bear Specialty Group http://www.bearbiology.com/bsgmain.html.
He has become increasingly addicted to capturing wildlife on film. During a stay in Bandhavgarh National Park he spent quite a bit of time, and drank a lot of alcohol, with the famous French tiger photographer Francois Savigny. Taking tiger photos all day and then going over them by bonfire while partying with a bunch of Europeans can be quite inspiring. His personal code for wildlife photography is that the well being and comfort of the wildlife is always more important than the photograph.
