About Us
Advancing conservation science through research, education, and partnerships across the Borderlands.
GRADUATE ASSISTANT
Jesse Ellgren
MS Student
Project: Wildlife Population and Community Trends along the U.S.-Mexico Border: Implications for Southwest Metapopulation Dynamics of the American Black Bear (Ursus americanus)
Advisor: Dr. Amanda M. Veals Dutt and Dr. Louis A. Harveson
Jesse was born and raised in the Front Range of Colorado. Starting his love for nature as a boy scout, he graduated in 2014 with a BS in wildlife biology from Colorado State University in Fort Collins. For ten years Jesse worked on a myriad of wildlife projects, from bubonic plague research in prairie dogs, to urban chronic wasting disease management. Most recently he live-trapped grizzly bears across the Inland Northwest with the US Fish and Wildlife Service before starting his black bear Master’s research at BRI. Outside of school, Jesse enjoys hiking, snowboarding, disc golf, and playing acoustic guitar.
To assess black bear distribution and response to increasing border infrastructure in southwest Texas, Jesse is sampling 50 of 222 possible 4×4 kilometer cells within a 12km buffer from the Rio Grande River across Val Verde, Kinney, and Maverick counties. From 3/19/25 to 12/31/25, across over half a million total photos, only two detection events of black bears have been recorded so far. With low detection rates, Jesse plans to include other large and medium bodied mammals into analyses to understand possible responses to border infrastructure, other anthropogenic factors, and landscape resources.
