Jason is a freelance outdoors and environmental writer and photographer. Born and raised in Oregon’s rain-soaked Willamette Valley, Jason moved to Idaho in 1995 to be closer to the state’s vast (and drier) wild country. A passion for out-of-the-way places saw him take jobs as cannery worker in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, whitewater guide in Utah’s redrock canyons, handyman and guest assistant at a backcountry lodge at 9,200-feet in Wyoming’s Absaroka Range and wildland firefighter in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest.

A love of travel and conservation issues has since taken Jason (along with Elizabeth) to destinations like the Grand Circuit in Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile’s Patagonia Region and the highlands of central Italy, where he met and interviewed biologists working on wolf conservation issues in the country’s lofty Apennine Mountains. Closer to home, he spends as much time as he can traveling and “working” his way through the Rocky Mountains on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

Jason has written about and photographed endangered wildlife, threatened wildlands, backcountry travel, food, sustainable living and other topics for Backpacker Magazine, Sun Valley Magazine, Boise Journal, Sun Valley Guide, Idaho Mountain Express, Idaho Statesman and other publications. He’s currently expanding his professional writing and photography work while pursuing a M.A. in environmental journalism at the University of Montana in Missoula. Jason received a B.A. in English from Boise State University.

Jason has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2008 J. Robb Brady Environmental Journalism Award given by the Idaho Conservation League, and was a finalist for a Maggie Award for a 2008 magazine article about wolf conservation in Idaho.