There are two versions of Don Russell, the Yukon caribou researcher who is retiring from Environment Canada's Canadian Wildlife Service this week.

Don Russell poses with a caribou calf belonging to the endangered Chisana herd. (photo: Kathi Egli)

One is the eminent scientist who was presented with the prestigious Northern Science Award by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada last month. That's the Don Russell described by a group of researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in their letter of commendation for the award ceremony.

It read, in part: "Don E. Russell is a luminary among Arctic animal ecologists, well respected both for the quality of his work as well as for his leadership and the generosity of his mentorship."

There's also the Don Russell his friends and colleagues like to tell stories about. Ask him about the time he knocked himself out with a food cache, urged one colleague.

It was the early 1970s, and Russell and his wife, Sharon, were studying logging, goats, and grizzlies in a British Columbia watershed. They had hiked far up the watershed, following bear trails, when they lost their footing while fording a fast, deep stream. They hauled themselves out, scraped and bruised, and set up camp to recover and dry their gear.

Russell bundled their food on the end of a rope in order to hang it from a nearby tree, out of the reach of bears. He tied a rock to the other end of the rope and threw the rock over a high branch.

"I must have been standing on the rope or got it tangled somehow, because it didn't slide over the branch," he says. "Instead it caught, swung back, and got me right in the face."

Add a swollen, bruised face to the injuries from the fall -- and the fact that no one knew where they were -- and Russell says the hike was one of his few bad decisions.

He has no regrets about the decision to come to the Yukon in 1976. He was in Williams Lake, when a friend sent him a Yukon government ad for a habitat biologist. The government wanted someone with northern experience, and Russell had done his graduate research at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, on the Central Arctic caribou.

"There were not a lot of people who had worked in the North in those days," he says. He got the job and joined a small group of biologists setting up the Yukon government's first wildlife research and management program from scratch.

"There was a budget, and you had to go and make what you could of it," he says.

Over the next few years the department got bigger, and Russell found himself doing more management and less science. That's when the Canadian Wildlife Service recruited him as caribou biologist in its small Whitehorse office -- just two biologists, managed by the Environment Canada office in Vancouver.

"I liked the idea that my boss was 2000 miles away," says Russell.

With Environment Canada, he continued his work on the Porcupine Caribou herd and its habitat, which extends from Alaska to the Northwest Territories. Over the years he's been building up a complete picture of the herd, starting with habitat and its impact on individual animals and progressing to an understanding of how the herd adapts to vegetation changes, insect harassment, weather, hunting, development -- all the factors that affect the herd's survival.

After Russell had worked a number of years with Environment Canada, the Whitehorse staff grew to the point where a local manager was required. He took on the job, although he tried to keep management to a minimum.

"I could only get away with it by hiring competent people who don't really need management," he explains.

Wendy Nixon, one of the competent people he hired and his successor as caribou biologist in the Whitehorse office, says the fact that none of his staff ever left is a testimony to the effectiveness of his management approach.

Even with a minimalist management style, administration began to get in the way of science, so six years ago Russell jumped at Environment Canada's offer of a position as research manager. Essentially, it allowed him to devote most of his time to what he loves, asking and answering interesting questions about caribou.

Retirement won't change things dramatically, says Russell. He has been given an "Emeritus" position with Environment Canada, which means he has an office and can continue his work, but he chooses what he does and when.

Filling the time won't be a problem, he says. He has about 10 scientific papers to work on, and he's coordinator for the new CircumArctic Rangifer Monitoring and Assessment Network (CARMA), which he helped found.

His Alaskan colleagues also had something to say about Russell's work with CARMA: "In a style that is typical of Don Russell, he has worked on this initiative with great modesty to bring indigenous people, researchers, and resource managers together to cooperatively ensure the future of the great herds of the North. His success with the launching of CARMA and in other areas of this work is an indication of the respect he commands from others."

Watch next week's column for more about CARMA and Don Russell's thoughts on the past and future of caribou research in the Yukon.