Dr. Rick Dunford is the founder and owner of Environmental Economics Services, LLC (EES), a consulting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina that specializes in the economic aspects of natural resource damages (NRD). Dr. Dunford holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin in Madison as well as Masters degrees in Economics and Agricultural Economics. He served as Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Washington State University in Pullman for nine years after receiving his Ph.D.

In 1986 Dr. Dunford joined the Center for Economics Research at the Research Triangle Institute, a not-for-profit consulting firm in North Carolina, as a Senior Economist.  In 1994 he co-founded Triangle Economic Research (TER), an environmental economics consulting firm in Durham, North Carolina  that was subsequently purchased by Blasland Bouck & Lee, Inc.  He formed EES in July of 2005.

Dr. Dunford specializes in the recreational impacts of oil spills and hazardous-substance releases, as well as groundwater damages from hazardous-substance releases. He has led or worked on more than forty NRD assessments. These projects range from cooperative assessments to confidential, internal assessments to litigation cases.  Dr. Dunford has provided trial testimony in three NRD cases and been deposed in more. He has also provided technical support on several resource-equivalency and habitat-equivalency analyses. 

Dr. Dunford is currently a member of both the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) and Association of Environmental and Resources Economists (AERE).