I am currently the Conservation Program Director for a grassroots-based non-profit in California called the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN) (www.SpawnUSA.org).  We are working to protect and restore the largest-remaining (although critically endangered) run of wild coho salmon in Central California.  Our work includes advocacy and policy-development, habitat restoration and native plant nursery, endangered species monitoring, rainwater harvesting, community training and a private landowner incentives program. 

I grew up in South Africa and moved to the US in 1994 to begin my university training. 

After grad school I worked as SPAWN’s watershed biologist since 2004 where I helped lead community-based monitoring and restoration projects to restore and protect coho and steelhead habitat in the Lagunitas Creek watershed.

I am a community ecologist by training with over 12 years experience working with California’s native plants and songbirds, endangered species monitoring, and habitat restoration. I graduated with a B.S. in Marine Biology from U.C. Santa Cruz and a M.S. in Ecology from the Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies and San Francisco State University. Over the past ten years I have worked on research and monitoring projects in a number of ecosystems ranging from California’s oak woodland and riparian forests, to the intertidal zone along Monterey Bay, to Tahitian reefs, to the turbid pelagos of the urbanized San Franciso Estuary.  I am nowhere happier (yet!) than close to home where I work on-the-ground to protect and restore the West Marin streams that support the largest remaining wild-run of coho in California.

I do dream of returning to Southern Africa to help with conservation and community-building projects there.  That may happen soon....