Dave grew up in the Seattle area, but regular soccer exchanges to Vancouver and summer holidays on Salt Spring tilted his compass northwards from an early age. After graduating with a degree in wildlife, Dave spent several years doing field research on spotted owls and other critters of the old growth forest ecosystem. Identifying wildlife habitat led to a career in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at the Wilderness Society where remote sensing was used to identify the rapid loss of old growth forest from California to Washington.

Dave’s first involvement with the Sierra Club was in 1991, when he was contracted to create the first comprehensive map of forests on Vancouver Island. The success of that campaign led to the Sierra Club creating a GIS program of its own in 1992 which has been an integral part of campaigns ever since, including the Great Bear Rainforest, Salmon at Risk, Haida Gwaii, and Climate Change. Sierra Club maps have been featured in National Geographic, Canadian Geographic and several smaller publications.

When obliged to leave his computer, Dave likes to hike in the summers and go skiing in the winters.