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Jill Shaffer

Jill Shaffer is an Ecologist with the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown, North Dakota. She is currently an Embassy Science Fellow with the U.S. Embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Jill Shaffer is an avian ecologist whose research advances the understanding of the effects of wind-energy facilities on birds. She has evaluated the behavioral impacts of wind facilities on grassland birds and waterfowl and devised a method, the Avian-Impact Offset Method, that quantifies those impacts so that State and Federal agencies can seek offsetting measures for the impacts. Information gained from Jill’s research will be used to help the U.S. Embassy in Kazakstan provide guidance to the Kazakh government and environmental NGO’s in how to preserve biodiversity in the face of increasing wind-energy development.

When not working on renewable-energy projects, Jill continues work on the writing of a 43-chapter synthesis on the effects of rangeland practices on grassland birds, an endeavor undertaken for 27 years and counting.