Robert Michael Pyle is a lepidopterist and author living in Grays River, Washington who has published twelve books and hundreds of papers, essays, stories and poems. He has a Ph.D. from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He founded the Xerces Society in 1974. His 1987 book Wintergreen describes the devastation caused by unrestrained logging in Washington's Willapa Hills near his adopted home. His 1995 book Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide was the subject of a Guggenheim Fellowship. On nearly 25 occasions from 1976 to 2013, Pyle has been a presenter and field trip leader at the annual week-long Family Nature Summits. Pyle's 1998 The Thunder Tree: Lessons from An Urban Wildland chronicled the intersection of his Aurora boyhood nature explorations and Colorado's long tradition of water rights battles. The following year his naturalist travel journal Chasing Monarchs: Migrating with the Butterflies of Passage traced his discovery of previously unnoticed monarch migration patterns. 

July 19th, 1947 in Denver (Age 77)