| Charles van Riper spent his formative
years roaming the woods throughout the Hudson River Valley in New York. The many hours
that he spent observing wildlife as a young person, instilled in him a love for
nature and provided a road map that he would follow throughout his
life.
After graduating from Mahopac Central High School in upstate New
York, he entered college. After being tutored at Juliard, Charles
transferred to the SUNY
music program. But then following his love of nature, he moved to Fort Collins,
Colorado to study wildlife management at Colorado State University.
For the next eight years he was trained by some of the preeminent biologists in
the western US. He studied ornithology under Dr. Paul H. Baldwin, who told
stories about the spectacular adaptive radiation of the Hawaiian
honeycreepers. This peaked Charles' interest and in 1968 he moved to the island of
Hawaii. While teaching biology at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy in
Kamuela, Hawaii, he began his first intensive study of birds, setting a
trajectory for
the remainder of his life. He taught his first ornithology class in 1969
to a select group of students, and many of those students
have gone on to successful careers, but all still have a deep interest in the
study of birds.
Charles then went to complete his doctoral research under
the guidance of Dr. Andrew J. Berger
at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. His PhD dissertation was completed
in 1979 on
two species of Hawaiian native birds (honeycreepers). It was in graduate school
that Charles met his wife, Sandra Jean Guest, another ornithology graduate
student. Following a post-doctoral experience with Dr. Clifford Smith
in Hawaii, where Charles and his wife Sandra worked out the complex picture of
the impact that introduced diseases were having on the native Hawaiian birds,
he moved to the University of California, Davis.
At UC Davis, Charles started the first California Cooperative Parks Studies
Unit, and began his 20-year career with the National Park Service. In
California Charles continued his research on avian disease and addressed many of the
pressing issues affecting bird communities in national parks throughout the state.
In 1989 the National Park Service asked Charles to
initiate
another Cooperative Parks Studies Unit, this time at Northern Arizona
University in Flagstaff, Arizona. He established this unit based on
an ecosystem concept, covering all national park areas within the fours states
(Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah) that comprise the Colorado Plateau.
Charles built this unit from one individual, to a team of 42 researchers, who as
an integrated research team, solved natural resources problem throughout the
southwestern US.
In 2003 Charles was again asked to assist with a
university based research station, this time with the Sonoran Desert Research
Station at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.
Today he serves as Unit Leader and Professor in the Department of Wildlife
and Fisheries Resources in the School of Natural Resources.
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Family History
Born and raised in upstate New York, Charles spent his early
years roaming the woods throughout the middle Hudson River Valley. This was the
same region that his former family members had occupied for the past several
centuries, since sailing from Holland in 1643 for New Amsterdam (now New York
City) in the New
World. In tracing back through the Van Riper family, former ancestors have
always resided in either New York or New Jersey, with one family branch
splitting off to Michigan and another to Colorado.
Charles has two younger brothers, Dr. Gary G. Van Riper
who now resides in Morrison, Colorado and Lt. Commander Drew F. Van Riper in
Manassas, Virginia. His parents were from New York, Dorothy Wilson and
Charles Van Riper, as were their parents.
Charles has a son, Charles (Kale) van Riper, and three
lovely daughters (Jacqueline, Kimberly, and Carena). To learn more about
his family, read his Christmas Letters: 2004
2005
2006 2007
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