Kevin J. Kritz, long-time raptor biologist and devoted public servant, passed away unexpectedly on 13 January 2022 in his home in Denver, Colorado, USA. He was 62. Kevin grew up in Watertown, Wisconsin, where he enjoyed being a Boy Scout and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.
Kevin received his baccalaureate from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point in 1982, and later received his M.S. from the University of Missouri–Columbia in 1989, where he studied and published on Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) and Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) nesting ecology in Missouri (Kritz 1989, Wiggers and Kritz 1991, Wiggers and Kritz 1994). Perhaps this is where Kevin's trait of never shying away from a challenge began, because in the mid- to late-1980s, virtually no contemporary nests of either Accipiter species were known in the state of Missouri, USA. After earning his M.S., Kevin was...