Born in the heart of the Silicon Valley in San Jose, California, Chad has always been surrounded by sprawling suburbia that abruptly interfaces with the tall trees and open spaces of the Santa Cruz Mountains. He has always been enthralled with the amount of diversity in flora, fauna, culture, and experiences that California has to offer. In his undergrad, Chad worked as an insect collector, gray whale counter, small mammal trapper, and raccoon latrine finder. After UCSB he moved up to Humboldt and worked with California Department of Fish and Wildlife as a coho and chinook salmon redd surveyor, CRFS sampler, and he even did a stint back in the Bay Area with the Santa Clara Valley Water District as a Biologist for their Stream Maintenance Program. It was back in Santa Clara County where he realized his fondness for urban ecosystems and the hardy species that are able to exploit them. Currently Chad is working in California's Central Valley and the Sacramento Metropolitan Area using camera traps to investigate how mammalian mesopredators (coyotes, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and domestic cats and dogs) may be shifting their temporal activity patterns across an urbanization gradient (from city center to suburbs to exurban communities and rural farmlands).  Further, he is looking into how mesopredator interactions compare between years during and after one of California's major droughts in order to understand how species may respond in future drought scenarios. Chad hopes that his experiences here at Humboldt will help further his drive to understand how humans and wildlife impact each other and how we can best find solutions to mediate the costs of climate change, urban sprawl, and unsustainable land use on our joined ecosystems.