John is a natural resource and environmental economist with more than 45 years of experience, mostly as a consultant but also as a Senior Economist for Alberta Environment and as Senior Economist/Social Scientist for the Alberta Natural Resources Conservation Board.
One focus of John’s work, since graduating with a Masters of Environmental Studies degree, has been the economics of recreation, fish and wildlife resources, parks and protected areas. His early career involved assessments of the value of fish, wildlife and recreational resources in British Columbia and Alberta as well determining the economic impacts of national and provincial parks.
His more recent work involved working with local and Indigenous communities to undertake ecological economic and socio-economic studies as background for creating territorial and national parks and protected areas in the NWT. He also conducted a detailed assessment of the outdoor recreation economy related to Crown lands in Alberta for the Tourism Industry Association of Alberta (2021) and calculated the economic impacts of various tourism development proposals for three of Alberta’s Tourism Development Zones as part of the Legacy Tourism Group team.
