Robert T. Lackey

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Robert T. Lackey (born 1944 in Kamloops, British Columbia) is a Canadian-born fisheries scientist and political scientist who lives in the United States. He works at Oregon State University as a professor of fisheries and wildlife and an adjunct professor of political science. He is known for studying how science and policy interact, natural resource management, and forecasts of salmon runs.

Education: He earned a B.S. in fisheries from Humboldt State University in 1967, an M.S. in Zoology from the University of Maine in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Fisheries and Wildlife from Colorado State University in 1971.

Career: Lackey began as an assistant professor of fisheries at Virginia Tech, becoming associate professor in 1973. He spent 1976-77 in Washington, D.C., on sabbatical, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Environment Program as national program coordinator. In 1979 he led the USFWS National Water Resources Analysis Group in West Virginia. In 1981 he joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s research laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon as a senior biologist and later served as deputy director from 1989 to 2000. In 1982 he also became a Courtesy Professor at Oregon State University. In 1999 he received a Fulbright Fellowship and taught at the University of Northern British Columbia. He retired from the EPA in 2008 to focus on Oregon State University.

Lackey’s early work aimed to solve practical fishing problems and improve fish yields through habitat improvements. Later he concentrated on defining how scientific information and scientists should influence natural resource policy. He played a leading role in policy options to restore wild salmon on the West Coast, a mission that sparked debate. In 2005 he led the four-year Salmon 2100 Project, which resulted in a book published in 2006. He has argued that scientists should keep their personal policy views out of research and cautioned against normative science that can undermine scientific credibility. His current work centers on education, especially online graduate courses in ecological and natural resource policy.