Don Kelly

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE WARDEN DON KELLY is currently a Patrol Captain for the North Coast District. Don heads the southern-most Captain’s District in the North Coast District, which includes Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties. He has been with the Department for forty years.

Don was born in Los Angeles and grew up on a small farm in the San Fernando Valley, where he had a lot of experience learning animal behavior. He was actively engaged in 4-H, and a lot of his background is associated with the animal husbandry he did in 4-H. Those activities gave him really good insight into domestic animal behavior, as well as wildlife behavior.

His interest in law enforcement arose from a positive experience he had as a child with his grandparents who took him fishing three times every summer. One time they got checked by a game warden, while fishing at a reservoir in the eastern Sierras. For Don it was an incredibly positive experience, and he told his grandmother, “This is a great job, wow!” That moment stuck with him.

That early encounter with a warden, plus Don’t passion for the biological field, being with animals, invertebrates, and everything in the biological realm led him to pursue a career with wildlife law enforcement.

In college, Don got a general degree in biology, but then did graduate work at Cal State Hayward in marine ecology. Cal State Hayward was associated with Moss Landing Marine Lab back then when it was just a singlewide trailer. His education gave him a really good sense of the ecological issues involved in the marine environment.