Victor Ernest Shelford (September 22, 1877 – December 27, 1968) was an American zoologist and animal ecologist who helped to establish ecology as a distinct field of study.

Shelford's early visits to and study of Volo Bog in Northern Illinois helped establish its ecological significance.

From 1899 to 1901 he attended West Virginia University, where he was influenced by his uncle William E. Rumsey, the assistant state entomologist.

He initiated the "century-cycle" project in 1933 at the University of Illinois' William Trelease Woods, which was used to study the relation between vertebrate and invertebrate populations with environmental factors.

He published a work in 1939 in Bio-Ecology in collaboration with Frederic E. Clements which attempted to integrate animal, plant, and aquatic ecologies as part of an ideal community.

He left the University of Illinois in 1946, but the same year he founded the Ecologist's Union, an organization which promoted the need to preserve entire ecological communities as part of nature conservation.

[6] Shelford's work with Clements helped to begin to develop the idea of biomes by characterizing them through flora and fauna.

In addition, he founded the Grassland Research Foundation in 1939, which he presided over in 1958, and served as chairman of their scientific advisory board from 1959 to 1968.