Steven Hess

Advisor

Steve Hess was a research wildlife biologist at USGS with interests in both native and invasive species for almost 20 years and is now leader of the USDA National Wildlife Research Center’s Hawai‘i Field Station. He began his career as a teenager catching sharks for cancer research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota Florida. He was awarded a B.S. in biology from Florida State University in 1987 and studied seabirds with the National Audubon Society’s Puffin Project in Maine, and landbird migration in New England and Central America. He studied tropical forest ecology at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panamá and received an M.S. in Forestry from the University of Montana in 1995 for his work on forest bird food resources in Belize. Steve developed a population monitoring scheme for the Yellowstone bison and received a Ph.D. in wildlife biology from Montana State University in 2002. He has served on graduate student committees at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and UH Hilo, Utah State University, and as a mentor to Pacific Islander and Native American undergraduate students in Hawai‘i, and for the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica. His expertise is in monitoring and management of invasive vertebrates, conservation, habitat management and endangered species restoration, and vegetation ecology. His current research portfolio is focused on developing methods to control invasive wildlife including coquí frogs, brown treesnakes, rodents, small carnivorous mammals, ungulates, parakeets, as well as their associated pathogens in Hawai‘i, Guam, Alaska, and remote islands of the Pacific. Steve was involved with planning and operations of the 2024 Wake Atoll rat eradication, which was declared successful in December 2025. Steve is enthusiastic about volcanic eruptions, bicycling, travelling, ancient Mayan archaeology, replacing the weeds in his yard with native Hawaiian plants, and his dog, Bruce Lee.