Beausoleil, Rich: - Rich Beausoleil has been conducting bear research since 1997 and has worked in Louisiana, Tennessee, New Mexico and in Washington, where he has been the statewide bear and cougar specialist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife since 2002. He helped establish and was the original Chair of the Management Committee for the International Association for Bear Research and Management (IBA), is the co-chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) first North American Bear Expert Team, and a member of the IUCN's Human-Bear Conflicts Expert Team. Rich is also a frequent contributor to professional publications and journals, and has authored several agency manuals on responding to human-carnivore conflicts; his efforts contributed to the state of Washington passing an anti-feeding regulation.Rich co-founded Washington's Karelian Bear Dog program in 2003. The handlers use the highly trained dogs to help resolve conflicts between people and bears in non-lethal ways. He's a frequent speaker at both professional conferences and community events, although he freely admits that understanding bears is often much easier than unraveling the mysteries of human behavior. He holds degrees in wildlife biology, a BS from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Master's Degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.