My dream is to help many more people realize a positive role with Nature by giving to, not just taking from, Earth. I hope to become closer to a broadening community seeking to be indigenous to the places they live, so that those places thrive with vibrant natural and human communities.

My adult life has been spent understanding and supporting agroecology and natural systems ecology and conservation along California’s central coast through labor, research, teaching, and activism.

I learn and write about what I learn. And so, I explored the federal and state endangered species listing process through successful petitions for listing the Ohlone tiger beetle (Cicindela ohlone) and Scotts Valley knotweed (Polygonum hickmanii) as endangered. And, I have bridged the ecological science into political realms to increase restoration and management of threatened habitat types including coastal prairie, coastal scrub, riparian systems, and maritime chaparral. This has allowed me to co-author management plans for protected natural areas and to publish work in scientific and popular journals. My peer-reviewed publications have been about restoration ecology in coastal prairie and arid riparian ecosystems as well as invasion biology in redwood ecosystems.

My occupations have included land stewardship with UC Natural Reserves, large-scale monitoring and strategic planning with The Nature Conservancy, professional education with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and teaching undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz. For a while, I advised the Sierra Club and am now an active advisor to the California Native Plant Society. In 1999, I was honored to be recognized as a Fellow by the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation.