Kristen Heath-Acre

Presenting: The Reintroduction of the Brown-headed Nuthatch to Missouri

Kristen has worked in a variety of ecological settings from Panama to the Texas plains, demonstrating a passion for learning and developing new skills. She is currently employed by the University of Missouri – Columbia as a Missouri Department of Conservation and Mark Twain National Forest collaborator. She serves in a lead role with the brown-headed nuthatch reintroduction and subsequent monitoring. In this role, she researches, communicates, and collaborates with a broad range of United States Forest Service, MU, and MDC staff.  Her work also requires monitoring other woodland songbirds.

Kristen received her Master of Science degree in Wildlife, Aquatic, and Wildlands Science and Management from Texas Tech University. Her research focused on population connectivity and trends of the federally and state listed snowy plover. This research involved work with MOTUS tracking system receivers; capture, handling, and tagging of a federally and state listed species; integration of new data with a large historical dataset; collaboration with multiple state and federal agency partners; and use of Integrated Population Modeling in a Bayesian framework. She has also worked at a wildlife rehabilitation center and in a variety of field positions.

In her free time Kristen enjoys reading and outdoor activities like birding, hiking, hunting, camping, and floating rivers with her husband, Matthew and their two dogs.