Michael Curran

Abnova Ecological Solutions provides a wide-array of ecological services, focused primarily on land reclamation and ecological restoration. Abnova is owned and operated by Dr. Michael Curran. Mike is a Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner (CERP) and received both the top M.S. and top Ph.D. Student Award in the country by the American Society of Reclamation Sciences upon completing his graduate degrees. He developed techniques to improve reclamation & restoration monitoring which not only improve data quality, but also reduce field time by 10-40x (depending on if handheld or drone imagery is used). He also pioneered the use of spatially-explicit dashboards to rapidly report reclamation monitoring results, allowing for informed decision making and easy-to-interpret data. Mike worked with 26 oil & gas companies in reporting reclamation and restoration data to the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Conservation Efforts Database prior to the 2015 Endangered Species Act listing decision of the Greater sage-grouse and was acknowledged by the USFWS for the importance of his contributions. He has experience transitioning the reclamation monitoring and reporting techniques he developed to conservation bank monitoring. Mike has experience developing reclamation plans which go beyond satisfying regulatory criteria towards restoring food webs and creating pollinator and wildlife habitat.