Pepper Trail (He/Him) is an ornithologist who has devoted his life to the study and conservation of the birds of the world. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1984, and was awarded post-doctoral fellowships by the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian, and the California Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society, and the author of over 30 peer-reviewed papers in ornithology, including such leading publications as Science, Conservation Biology, and National Geographic.
From 1998 until his retirement in 2021, he was the Senior Ornithologist at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where he created The Feather Atlas of North American Birds, the leading feather-identification website. He has been active in many regional environmental efforts, particularly the establishment and expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, and was a long-time board member of PLAYA, the arts and sciences residency program in Summer Lake, Oregon.
Pepper is widely published as a poet, writer, and photographer. He regularly contributes environmental essays to the syndicated Writers on the Range series. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Catamaran, Ascent and many other publications, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Awards. His collection, Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He lives in Ashland, Oregon, and when not pursuing birds, wildflowers, and bumble bees in the surrounding mountains, leads natural history expeditions around the world.