Nongame Program Staff

Name: Sonya Knetter
Phone: (208) 769-1414
Email: sknetter@idfg.idaho.gov
Job Title: Regional Nongame Biologist
Location: Panhandle Region

Sonya is responsible for developing and implementing regional nongame inventories and conservation programs for the Department's Panhandle Region. Sonya hails from Madison, Wisconsin. She received a B.S. in Zoology and a B.S. in Conservation Biology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1995. In 2000, she completed her M.S. degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she investigated a modeling technique that incorporates landscape pattern into predicted species distributions.

Sonya has worked primarily in wildlife research (grassland and wetland bird ecology) and habitat restoration, management, and planning. Prior to moving to Idaho, she coordinated a landscape-scale habitat evaluation study assessing the effects of wetland and grassland restoration and management activities on nongame grassland birds, pheasants, and ducks in east-central Wisconsin.

Sonya's professional interests include applying geographic information systems technologies in natural resource planning, management and research, landscape ecology, conservation biology, restoration ecology, and habitat modeling.

Outside of work she loves being a mom and spending time with family. She enjoys birding, traveling, hunting along side her bird dog, fly fishing, camping, hiking, cooking, and sewing. With so many neat places in Idaho to recreate, Sonya truly wonders how she can ever experience it all!