Stephen Porter

Throughout his boyhood, Ohio native Stephen H. Porter, was instinctively drawn to the rural woodlots and creek bottoms scattered throughout the farmlands. As a teenager, rifle or shotgun in hand, Steve invested his idle time hunting pheasants, quail, squirrels, raccoons, and woodchucks, further igniting his passion for everything wild.

As a high school senior, discovering certain universities offered degrees in wildlife biology, Steve’s restless spirit lured him west to Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Biology while working summer jobs with the U.S. Forest Service and the Utah Division of Wildlife doing rangeland inventory, Steve realized the vast open space of the Rocky Mountains was where he belonged. Permanent employment in the western states scarce, Steve accepted a biologist position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Raleigh, North Carolina.

His overwhelming desire to return west intermixed with personal perseverance and the grace of God, Steve chased down and secured an incredibly competitive position as a Wildlife Conservation Officer trainee with the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

In 1973, following nearly a year of intensive classroom and field training based in Denver, Steve was awarded a permanent position in north central Colorado, North Park. Purposely selecting this remote, sparsely populated mountain park because of its diversity of wildlife resources, it was the people living in this unique, highly independent mountain culture that kept Steve and his family there for over two decades.

Raising two children, Marc Alan and Anne Marie, Steve and his wife Betsy thrived in the massive, northern mountain park the Native Americans called the Bull Pen. Passionately working for Colorado’s wildlife resources was an avocation defining Steve to this day.

In 1993, utilizing twenty plus years working with landowners, hunters and fishermen, government agencies and the public, Steve accepted Wildlife Biologist positions stationed in Denver and later Fort Collins, coordinating Colorado’s Habitat Partnership and Game Damage Programs; a two-pronged approach for resolving statewide big game conflicts. Retiring from the Colorado Division of Wildlife in 2003, Steve and Betsy are enjoying their good life near the foothills of northern Colorado.