Merav Ben-David

Merav Ben-David was born in 1959 in Nachlat Yehudah

Merav Ben-David was born on 17 January 1959 to a Jewish family in Israel. She grew up on a farm near Rishon LeZion. She did her compulsory military service in the Israeli Air Force.

She earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Tel Aviv University in 1984, followed by a master's degree. She worked as a safari guide in Kenya for 5 years and then moved to Alaska. She received her PhD from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1996.

Her research deals with carnivores and their place in ecosystems, including otters and polar bears. She studied the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill on otters, and her work was used in assessing the damage. She has published more than 110 papers on climate change, pollution and other threats to animals.

She joined the University of Wyoming and became a full professor in 2010. She later headed its Department of Zoology and Physiology. She has lived in Laramie, Wyoming, and became a U.S. citizen in 2009.

In January 2020 she announced a run for the U.S. Senate. She won the Democratic nomination in August 2020 but lost the general election to Republican Cynthia Lummis. In 2022 she ran for the Wyoming state house.