Bear Canyon Consulting, LLC is a woman-owned consulting company that specializes in wildlife-related planning, baseline studies, inventory, monitoring, and research. Our broad capabilities and experience make us knowledgeable of the ecological, regulatory, legal, and political context of a project. Our small size allows us to work closely with the client to provide a product that best meets their needs.

•  BCC has expertise conducting baseline ecological assessments; habitat suitability investigations; range health assessments; live-trapping, mark-recapture, and radio telemetry; quantifying recreational trail-use; vegetation sampling; weed mapping; sensitive species surveys; raptor surveys; critical habitat identification; habitat conservation planning, and habitat and population monitoring. BCC is certified to carry out Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse clearances.

•  BCC provides expert services in environmental planning and compliance for large and small projects needing to provide documents pursuant to the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, and local planning regulations.

Selected Projects

•  Hibernation ecology of Preble's meadow jumping mice in the South Boulder Creek Natural Area. State of Colorado Species Conservation Trust Fund Grant.

•  Programmatic Biological Assessment, Conference Report, and Conservation Strategy for impacts from transportation improvement projects on select sensitive species on Colorado's central shortgrass prairie. Prepared for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Colorado Field Office

•  Develop and test a habitat monitoring protocol for Preble's meadow jumping mouse. Air Force Academy contract #F05611-03-P-0035.

•  Monitor translocated and natural colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs on Boulder County Parks and Open Space.

•  Inventory of small mammal diversity in Boulder Mountain Parks.

Key Staff

Anne Ruggles

Anne Ruggles is a project manager, wildlife ecologist, and attorney with an emphasis in natural resources law. She has worked for twenty years as a field biologist in Central America, Texas, Alaska, and Colorado. She has managed EAs, BAs, ecological assessments, and academic research. She has led projects including developing management strategies, habitat monitoring protocols for endangered species, regulatory compliance, and ecological assessments. She holds an MS in Wildlife Biology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a JD from the University of Colorado School of Law with a concentration in natural resources law and has more than 20 years experience as a wildlife biologist in Texas, Central America, Alaska, and Colorado. Anne also holds an appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder and she serves as a wildlife biologist on the Colorado Division of Wildlife's Wolf Management Planning Group

Melissa Reed-Eckert

Melissa Reed-Eckert is a project manager and wildlife ecologist. She has worked as an environmental consultant in Colorado since 2000. She has experience with biological inventory and monitoring, track surveys, spotlight surveys, small mammal live trapping, Preble's meadow jumping mouse presence/absence surveys, mark-recapture methods, population estimation, tracking wildlife movement with radio telemetry, rangeland management and range health monitoring, species assessments, and literature reviews. She has worked on a range-wide evaluation of Preble's meadow jumping mouse habitat, locating and describing Preble's meadow jumping mouse hibernacula and hibernation habitat, wildlife movement in landscapes fragmented by roadways, black-tailed prairie dog anti-predator behavior, and monitoring translocated and natural colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs. She holds a BA in Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.