Richard is a professor emeritus of Wildlife Conservation at Colorado State University and is passionate about the intersection of land use and land health in the American West. Presently, he sits on a number of boards including the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, where he was Vice-President of Conservation, the Science Board of the Malpai Borderlands Group, the Land Conservation Assistance Network and Rocky Mountain Land Library. Additionally, for 16 years he sat on the Board of Editors for Conservation Biology and for 10 years on the Board of Editors for Ecological Applications.