New Mexico About Us
The New Mexico Unit is led by Dr. James Cain who began at the Unit in 2010 as the Assistant Unit Leader of Wildlife. Dr. James Cain is a wildlife biologist studying the ecology of large mammals in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Dr. Abby Lawson, Assistant Unit Leader of Wildlife, is a quantitative ecologist focused on identifying drivers of population dynamics and behavior, and decision analysis. Dr. Kasey Pregler, Assistant Unit Leader of Fisheries, studies the evolutionary ecology and conservation of freshwater fishes using a combination of quantitative and genetic methods.
Drs. Cain, Lawson, and Pregler are members of the Graduate College at New Mexico State University and as such hold research faculty rank. They teach graduate level courses and support graduate students and post-doctoral associates through research topics that range from elk, bear, and desert bighorn sheep resource selection, population ecology, decision support science to inform management policy, and how to improve fitness of declining fish populations (e.g., demographic/genetic/evolutionary rescue, captive breeding) in the face of environmental change.
The New Mexico Unit is housed within the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology (FWCE) in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences on the New Mexico State University campus in Las Cruces. Unit offices for both the scientists and students are located within FWCE of Knox Hall. The Unit scientists and affiliated staff oversee a suite of laboratories that include chemistry, GIS, and fisheries laboratories.