James A. Estes

James A Estes
Born	(1945-10-02) October 2, 1945 Sacramento, California
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	University of Minnesota
Scientific career
Institutions	U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service U.S. Geological Survey University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC)

James Allen Estes (born October 2, 1945) is an American ecologist and Distinguished Professor at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), known for his studies of sea otters and kelp forest ecology. Born in Sacramento, California, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1967, earned a Masters in Biology from Washington State University in 1969, and a Ph.D. in biology and statistics from the University of Arizona in 1974. He worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey from 1974 to 2007 before joining the UCSC faculty. He is a wildlife ecologist known for his work on ecosystem effect of large predators on ecosystems. He co-edited the books The Community Ecology of Sea Otters (1988), Whales, Whaling, and Ocean Ecosystems (2007), and Trophic Cascades: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature (2010), and is the author of Serendipity: An Ecologist's Quest to Understand Nature (2016). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. Estes and his work are featured prominently in the documentary film, The Serengeti Rules, which was released in 2018.

External links

• Research page
• James Estes: The Ecological Function of Apex Predators on YouTube