Contact: Sammy McDavid

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A much-honored Mississippi State faculty member is receiving yet another recognition for significant contributions to quail science.

Loren W. “Wes” Burger is among three selections for a 2017 National Quail Symposium Award of Excellence, a career tribute from the Tennessee-based National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative and Bobwhite Technical Committee.

Associate director of the university’s Forest and Wildlife Research Center and Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, Burger is a John Grisham Master Teacher who holds the Dale H. Arner Professorship of Wildlife Ecology and Management. He joined the MSU faculty in 1993.

In 2013, he was named a Fellow of The Wildlife Society, the Maryland-based international association dedicated to excellence in wildlife stewardship through science and education.

Burger has helped lead the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Bobwhite Restoration Project and National Conservation Practice 33 monitoring program. A University of Missouri doctoral graduate in wildlife biology, he is the author or co-author of 14 book chapters, 52 symposia proceedings and 90 peer-reviewed scientific publications, much of them focused on bobwhite ecology and management.

Last year, he was presented with the campus’ prestigious Ralph E. Powe Excellence in Research Award. Prior to that, he garnered major professional commendations from the Mississippi Chapter of The Wildlife Society, Southeast Quail Study Group, Mississippi Wildlife Federation and MSU College of Forest Resources.

Other 2017 National Quail Symposium Award winners include Leonard A. “Lenny” Brennan of Texas A&M University-Kingsville and the late Robert J. “Rob” Robel of Kansas State University. For more about the presenting organizations, see www.bringbackbobwhites.org.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, also available online at www.msstate.edu.