Read more about the 2025 Local Heroes:
Susan Schwartz, Community Hero
Annie Burke, Conservation Action
“Este es un ratón recolector de marismas saladas,” Mirella Ramos tells a group of elementary- and middle-school students at the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. And then Ramos repeats it in English, “This is a salt marsh harvest mouse.” As the bilingual youth program manager at the Sonoma Land Trust, Ramos runs and helped design nature programs accessible to Spanish-speaking students in Sonoma County. “Even if there’s just one student or one parent who needs Spanish interpretation, we’re providing it for them.”
Leading two programs for Sonoma County students, Ramos has been teaching wetland ecology to third and fourth graders through the land trust’s field trip program, Students Learning in Marsh Environments (SLIME), since 2019, and in 2020 Ramos launched the Conservation Council, a cohort of 26 high school students who annually conduct soil and wildlife research. Ramos translates the language and experience so Spanish-speaking students feel at home. They play corridos and reggaeton music during car rides, use sand to design Peruvian Nazca Lines art projects, and snack on Sponch and Pingüinos.
But it took a while for Ramos to feel at home in nature. In South Central Los Angeles where they grew up, wildlife—much less a moment of quiet—was rare. Nature was insects flitting around the banana and guava trees planted by their parents—a slice of El Salvador in the yard—and mud pies made into pupusas with siblings, like those their mom sold from the kitchen. Growing up in a low-income and immigrant family, Ramos saw science as “ just something that didn’t seem accessible to me,” a feeling carried throughout college.
Before Ramos’s graduation from Sam Houston State University, a sister tragically passed away, propelling Ramos to seek purpose in life. While hiking with friends through the pines of Sam Houston National Forest, and in LA encountering the breathtaking views of Runyon Canyon, Ramos was awestruck. Without much hiking experience or proper backpacking gear, they joined the California Conservation Corps, as a backcountry crew member, and later worked with the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service. The people they met were misfits just like them, says Ramos. Still, they rarely saw people of color as leaders or hiking along the trails. “It made me curious,” says Ramos. “Why am I not seeing more people like me and more of my BIPOC community?”
Ramos joined the Sonoma Land Trust five years ago in an effort to reach more young people from BIPOC and low-income communities, using their background to help students cultivate a connection with nature. The students visit preserves across the county to watch birds, identify forest species, collect soil samples, maintain wildlife cameras, and read and write scientific papers.
“I was learning alongside them in the first couple years,” says Ramos. “I feel like they taught me, just as much as I taught them.”
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