Phil Pister retired in February 1990 following 38 years as a fishery biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. He studied wildlife conservation and zoology under A. Starker Leopold at the University of California (Berkeley) and has spent virtually his entire career supervising aquatic management and research within an area encompassing approximately a thousand waters of the eastern Sierra/desert regions of California, ranging from the 14,000 foot crest of the Sierra Nevada to the floor of Death Valley lying below sea level. He founded and serves as executive secretary of the Desert Fishes Council and is involved in desert ecosystem preservation throughout the American Southwest and adjoining areas of Mexico. He holds special interest in the fields of conservation biology and environmental ethics and has served on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and Society for Conservation Biology. He also serves on the President's Advisory Committee of the University of California's system-wide White Mountain Research Station. He conducts environmental ethics workshops at the National Conservation Training Center (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) in West Virginia, has lectured at 81 universities in North America and the United Kingdom, and has authored more than 80 published papers and book chapters.