Eric H. Metzler

Eric first saw butterflies at his grandmother's rock garden. Tolerant parents allowed Eric to collect butterflies, and other natural history objects. Except for the fiddler crabs, Eric's dad insisted that all specimens be dead. Profits from a paper route enabled the purchase of Holland's The Butterfly Book, which cost $31.00 in 1955!

At Michigan State University, Eric took every entomology class that he could fit into his schedule. His first date with his wife-to-be, Pat, was a trip black lighting for moths. At his retirement from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 1996, Ohio's Governor George Voinovich appointed Eric as Ambassador of Natural Resources. In 2005, Eric was inducted in the Ohio Natural Resources Hall of Fame.

In 1979 he co-founded two organizations - The Ohio Lepidopterists and the Columbus Natural History Society. In 1997 he co-founded Ohio's state-wide butterfly monitoring program (www.butterflymonitoring.org) and the Midwest Biodiversity Institute, Inc.

Eric is active in The Lepidopterists' Society. He chaired the committee on collecting and was President in 1996-97.

Eric holds an Adjunct appointment in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University. He is a research associate of The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the U.S. National Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico, and The Florida State Collection of Arthropods. He is listed in Who's Who.

Eric Metzler publishes regularly. His current research interests include Cochylini (Tortricidae) and Lepidoptera which occur in the northern Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico. He is conducting started long term studies of the moths at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, White Sands National Monument, and Oliver Lee Memorial State Park in New Mexico.

He and his wife, Patricia, have one son, Meredith. Eric lives in Alamogordo, New Mexico.