David Trauger of Frostburg, Md., director and professor of the Virginia Tech National Capital Region’s Natural Resources Program, has earned the Chairman’s Award for Professional Service to the Foundation from the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation (RNRF).

Trauger received this honor in recognition of his leadership and support of the foundation’s purposes and activities. He began his involvement with the RNRF in 2000 while working with the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Biological Resources Division. During that time, he served as a representative on the program committee for RNRF’s 2000 Congress on Promoting Sustainability in the 21st Century. More recently, Trauger has served as chairman of the RNRF Washington Roundtable on Public Policy and the Committee on Program Development.

Along with his service to the RNRF and the USGS, Trauger in 2003 headed a review of the relationship of economic development on wildlife conservation for The Wildlife Society. Trauger began his career as a wildlife research biologist at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota. When retired from executive service, he was Chief of the Division of Wildlife Research for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, D.C.

Since 2001, Trauger has been a professor of fisheries and wildlife sciences in the College of Natural Resources at Virginia Tech. For many years he had served on that department’s advisory board prior to becoming director of Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region’s Natural Resources Program in Falls Church, Va. He has built the infant Capital Region program up to 100 students. In response to the substantial growth, the university’s graduate school has recently increased his budget to hire additional faculty members and post doctoral fellows.

Trauger received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and Ph.D. from Iowa State University.

Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.

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