[1] Lee was born in Lodi, California on March 15, 1971, and attended Tokay High School.
For his MS degree he investigated the migratory behavior of black brant geese in Humboldt Bay using capture-recapture statistics to estimate stopover duration and space use.
[2][3] His academic work on climate influences on marine bird demography, spotted owls and forest fire, and computer vision applications to wildlife biology are highly cited.
[5][6][7] He worked at Point Blue Conservation Science for 8 years on Southeast Farallon Island[8] studying how ocean climate change affects the population dynamics of marine predators such as elephant seals, Cassin's auklets, and common murres.
Lee has published more than 50 scientific peer-reviewed papers in the field of ecology,[9] mainly focused on demography and population biology of wild vertebrates.