Senior Environmental Scientist

Joined LGL in 1998

Degrees & Diplomas

Research Interests

• Environmental impact assessments
• Oil and Gas environmental policy
• Emergency response planning
• Biodiversity
• Endangered species
• Noise in the marine environment
• Environmental education and training
• Cumulative impacts

Capsule Resume

Michelle Gilders has 16 years of oil and gas industry experience. She joined British Petroleum in 1988 as an External Affairs Analyst in London, England. There, she worked on European, Asian, and Australasian environmental policy issues writing briefing papers and issue assessments for management. In 1990, she transferred to BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., based in Anchorage, Alaska. In Alaska, she managed a variety of ecological research programs on birds, marine mammals, and terrestrial mammals, and was responsible for permitting, agency liaison, and environmental training. She joined LGL in February 1998. Ms. Gilders has written numerous oil spill and other emergency response plans, environmental assessments, environmental impact statements (including work on sea turtles, marine mammal and cumulative impacts for a variety of seismic exploration activities), permit applications, environmental training programs, and video scripts, and has compiled substantial literature reviews and bibliographic databases. Ms. Gilders is an experienced writer and photographer with a proven ability to take complex scientific information and synthesize it into a readable document. She has nine popular natural history books currently in print. She has contributed essays, articles, and photographs to several scientific journals and magazines.