Local Heroes 2023: Blanca Olivia Hernández, Environmental Educator Award
Bay Nature’s 2023 environmental educator hero, Blanca Hernández. (Illustration by Eric Nyquist)
The 2023 Bay Nature Local Hero Awards
Every year, the Bay Nature board chooses four community-nominated leaders who are changing Bay Area nature and communities for the better. “These are folks who speak with their actions and choices over days, years, and decades and motivate us all to do the same,” writes our editor in chief, Victoria Schlesinger. Here are profiles of the 2023 award winners:
In first grade, Blanca Hernández showed up in her classroom in Ninthi, Mexico, with her neighborhood dogs in tow. Her teacher took one look at the dogs and told her, “You can’t bring your dogs to class.” Hernández responded, “Well, then I don’t know if I can be here.”
Even in first grade, Hernández knew the sort of world she did want to live in. “I always had this little imaginary notebook,” Hernández says. “I was like, ‘When I’m a leader, I’m going to do things differently.’” Hernández immigrated to the United States at age nine, moving from her family’s farm to San Diego.
Her experiences attending public school in California—enduring systemic prejudice and racism—informed her journey, and she kept her imaginary list going, planting seeds for a brighter future, one that would nurture and encourage young people of color like her to grow.
Today, in the East Bay’s Richmond, Hernández can still be found with dogs by her side. Her love of animals and nature has remained constant, as has her passion for creating a more equitable, inclusive world. She does this through her position as director of programs and partnerships at YES Nature to Neighborhoods, a nonprofit that provides Richmond-based youth, young adults, and families with opportunities to be outdoors. On top of designing and implementing programs, Hernández is sometimes the person transporting equipment, and other times she is an activity leader.
In partnership with environmental organizations like the East Bay Regional Park District and others, YES offers chances to participate in coastal cleanups at Point Reyes, whitewater rafting on the American River, visits to Samuel P. Taylor State Park, and much more. “I think of people that live in apartment buildings on the second floor, who have never had experiences like my upbringing—where they got to really connect with nature,” says Hernández. “Those are the people that I want in the program.”
Hernández is also involved in TOGETHER Bay Area, the Association for Environmental & Outdoor Education, ChangeScale, and other organizations. “What if we were all leaders?” Hernández says. “Because we all have it. It’s in us. It’s a matter of nurturing it, and polishing it, and putting it out in the world.”
“We learn that so many of our ancestors, regardless of culture, based many of their practices on observing the natural world, and that throughout history some of us have been forcibly removed from this connection,” Hernández wrote in an email. “Our work is about reclaiming that connection to the earth and embracing the power of nature to heal, inspire awe, and develop empowered and compassionate leaders.” —Lia Keener
After ‘Heartbreaking’ Vandalism, Sausal Creek Plant Nursery Volunteers Pick Up the Pieces
When Ella Matsuda got to the Friends of Sausal Creek nursery in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park around 3:45 pm on Jan. 20, it looked as if a natural disaster had blown through.
Tender seedlings lay strewn across the ground and crushed beneath overturned workbenches, and pipes had been yanked out of place. During the four hours Matsuda had been away, a vandal or vandals had apparently clambered over a downed tree on the back fence and scattered the nursery’s 4,000 plants in broad daylight.
“It was heartbreaking,” says Peter Van der Niellen, a regular FOSC volunteer who came the day after to help re-pot plants. “This must have been a group of people, because those benches are heavy, and it was total destruction.”
“What’s most disappointing to me is just the disrespect to all of the volunteer time that has been put in here,” says Matsuda, FOSC’s nursery manager. “The plants will come back.”
At least 600 seedlings were lost, and the organization estimates material damages as high as $8,000. It may take hundreds of hours of volunteer time to restore the nursery, Matsuda estimated.
Friends of Sausal Creek is a restoration organization with three staff and hundreds of volunteers. The 26-year-old organization has supplied thousands of native plants to over 26 restoration sites along the Sausal Creek watershed throughout Oakland—plants such as Douglas irises, wild strawberries, honeysuckle, California poppies, various native grasses, and berry bushes. The FOSC nursery volunteers collect and grow seeds from Oakland parks, including endangered species like the pallid manzanita—which is only found in the East Bay, with 75 percent of the entire population found along Sausal Creek.
Sausal Creek begins in Joaquin Miller Park in the Oakland hills, flows down through the city out to Fruitvale and into the estuary. It ends at San Francisco Bay. The creek is home to native rainbow trout, which rely on creek banks stabilized by the native species planted there.
FOSC has also worked to daylight Sausal Creek through Diamond Canyon park, implementing an erosion prevention program and enhancing green spaces for flood mitigation during rainstorms. In addition to restoration, FOSC’s environmental education program partners with youth organizations and provides field trips to low-income schools for students to get involved in the green spaces and restoration efforts in their own backyard. In 2019, about 1,300 Oakland students participated in FOSC programming.
“They can come out for a three-hour field trip that involves working in the ground, planting plants or removing invasives, doing hikes, learning about the trout, water quality, learning about our endangered species,” says Anna Marie Schmidt, executive director of FOSC.
FOSC filed a report with Oakland Police on the vandalism, but no officers visited the site. The day after the destruction, about 40 volunteers gathered at the nursery to lift the tables back up and save as many crushed and scattered plants as possible.
“That’s one of my favorite things about this organization,” says Matsuda. “We just have such an incredible community that is here to pick us back up anytime.”
Want to help? Check out Friends of Sausal Creek’s volunteer page.
Meet Clayton Anderson, Bay Nature’s 2021 Environmental Education Hero
Clayton Anderson. (Photo by Tanya Henderson)
Clay Anderson’s desire to be an environmental educator began when he was 10 years old and has never wavered. He recalls the amazement he felt while watching fish interacting as he peered into his aquarium. Curiosity and wonder are sparks he wants to ignite in teenagers as Youth Program Manager at Golden Gate Audubon Society.
Teenagers have bits and pieces of information, Anderson says, and he stitches the pieces together into a broader picture of concepts that can lead them down the proverbial rabbit hole. Where does oil come from?If plastic comes from nature, why is it bad for the environment? “It starts with one question, then leads to another question and another. And who knows? You may end up in geology or social history. Follow your curiosity, and you’d be amazed where it leads.”
Join us for our 2021 virtual Local Hero Awards!
Meet Clayton and this year’s other inspiring local heroes on April 11th. Get a free ticket, or buy a VIP ticket to support Bay Nature. Register here!
Usually, Anderson organizes 40 field trips a year through Audubon, upward of 30 students per trip. A significant barrier preventing students from experiencing nature is transportation, especially for kids of color from challenged economic backgrounds. Currently teaching online, Anderson focuses on empowering students to take self-initiation. “We can’t physically be there, so we encourage them to take themselves on a field trip. Look at what you can do in your backyard.”
(Photo courtesy Clayton Anderson)
For Anderson, the notion of self-initiation harkens back to growing up in the South Side of Chicago. Because of his family’s socioeconomic background, there was little expectation for Anderson to attend college. But he wanted to be a biologist. After studying for two years at Northland College in Wisconsin, he withdrew and moved to California with his father. “I wasn’t educated to go to college, like most people of color in that time, in that place. I realized I was not prepared.”
But Anderson never stopped moving forward. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in drawing and painting from San José State University. He credits his mother, an illustrator, as his artistic influence. He considers himself a lifelong student, and this philosophy led him to classes at Golden Gate Audubon, including a yearlong intensive Master Birder Course in 2015. For his class project, Anderson presented on the Ridgway’s rail. “We need to do more; that bird is only endangered because of lack of habitat. We’ve destroyed 90 percent of it.” While his classmates utilized technology for their presentations, Anderson went analog, using pencil drawings and pastels; “[it] is my all-time favorite way of communicating.” In 2019, he taught Golden Gate Audubon’s class “Nature Journaling in the Heart of Oakland.” The 10-month course focused on Lake Merritt’s seasonal changes and natural history. It’s Anderson’s twofer: art and environmental education, the best of both worlds.
Meet Bay Nature’s 2017 Local Heroes
“Many of us live in the Bay Area because of its rich natural heritage. And once a year we like to recognize just a few of the many people who are responsible for protecting and stewarding it.” — David Loeb, publisher, Bay Nature
Every year, Bay Nature Institute selects several people whose extraordinary work on behalf of conservation and environmental education in the Bay Area warrants special recognition and appreciation. This year, we’re proud to announce four Bay Nature “Local Heroes” for 2017, selected by Bay Nature Institute board and staff from over fifty nominations submitted by members of the Bay Area conservation community. Join us in honoring these heroes at Bay Nature’s Annual Awards Dinner on Sunday, March 26, 2017.
This year’s Local Heroes are:
Conservation Action Award (Recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the conservation of the natural landscapes, wildlife, and/or flora of the San Francisco Bay Area, through advocacy, legal action, acquisition, and/or stewardship.)
David Lewis, Executive Director, Save The Bay
David Lewis has been an effective advocate, tireless organizer, and articulate spokesperson for San Francisco Bay for more than 18 years. As executive director of Save The Bay, David has brought together environmental experts, public officials, business leaders, and grassroots activists to forge regional solutions to the Bay’s most pressing challenges. He has helped build Save The Bay into a regional political force, culminating with his leadership of the successful campaign for Measure AA, the first ever voter-approved region-wide funding measure in the Bay Area. Passed in June 2016, Measure AA secures $500 million for the restoration of San Francisco Bay wetlands and shoreline over the next 20 years. David’s keen political instincts and strategic vision were critical in achieving this milestone victory for the Bay. David has also testified before Congress on oil spill prevention measures, helped block expansion of runways at San Francisco International Airport into the Bay, and mobilized opposition to the development of restorable wetlands in Redwood City. Under David’s leadership, Save the Bay has engaged thousands of Bay Area residents in volunteer habitat restoration projects around the Bay shoreline. David says, “It’s such a privilege to work for a healthy Bay with a large and growing community of people who care for this remarkable natural treasure and produce results that we can see and touch.”
Born in Palo Alto, David went east to earn a B.A. in Politics and American Studies from Princeton University, and then spent 14 years in the political trenches in Washington DC where he served as director of policy and legislation for Physicians for Social Responsibility, senior legislative assistant to Senator Carl Levin, and chief operations officer for the League of Conservation Voters. Eventually, his love of the Bay Area got the better of him and he returned in 1998 to take the job at the helm of Save the Bay. He now lives in Kensington.
Environmental Education Award (Recognizes the achievements of an individual who has made significant contributions to public understanding and awareness of the natural history and ecology of the San Francisco Bay Area, through research, teaching, field trips, journalism, and/or other media.)
Rebecca Johnson & Alison Young Co-Coordinators, California Academy of Sciences Citizen Science Project
For the first time, Bay Nature has selected two people to receive one of its Local Hero awards. That’s because Rebecca Johnson and Alison Young, recipients of the 2017 award for Environmental Education, are an indivisible team. They are the creators and co-leaders of the highly-regarded Citizen Science program at the California Academy of Sciences. They engage volunteers – “citizen scientists” – in discovering, observing, and documenting biodiversity at various places around the Bay Area. From creating a complete current record of the plants on Mount Tamalpais, to monitoring species at local rocky intertidal sites along the Central California coast, to organizing bioblitzes in San Francisco parks and open spaces, Rebecca and Alison provide opportunities for Bay Area residents to connect to the outdoors and science as well as build invaluable knowledge of the region’s biodiversity and understand how it is being impacted by climate change.
With their multitude of organizational partners, Rebecca and Alison are building communities and creating stewards of nature, both in person and online (through the Academy’s iNaturalist platform). Alison and Rebecca are also cofounders of the Bay Area Citizen Science Coalition; their work serves as a model for citizen science programs around the country seeking to engage their own communities and gather critical biodiversity data.
Alison Young grew up in Lafayette, in the East Bay. After earning her BA in biology from Swarthmore College, Alison spent six years teaching environmental education in San Mateo County. She then returned to school, receiving an MA from Humboldt State University, where her research focused on the rocky intertidal communities of the California coast. Alison was subsequently hired by the Greater Farallones Marine Sanctuary to run its intertidal monitoring program, followed by an offer from Cal Academy. She now also serves on the steering committee of the national Citizen Science Association and lives in Sonoma.
Rebecca Johnson grew up in Thousand Oaks, California then migrated to the Bay Area for undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley. She received her MA from San Francisco State and her PhD in invertebrate zoology and marine biology from UC Santa Cruz. She began working at the California Academy of Sciences as an undergraduate 20 years ago and along with her citizen science work, continues her research on the evolutionary history of nudibranchs and, more generally, how intertidal species composition is changing due to climate change. Rebecca now lives in San Francisco.
Youth Engagement Award (Recognizes an individual, 25 years old or younger, who is making significant contributions in the fields of natural history, stewardship of the natural world, conservation action, and/or environmental education.)
Uriel Hernandez, Community Forestry Coordinator, Canopy
Uriel Hernandez was born and raised in East Palo Alto. He attended Menlo-Atherton High School but spent a semester during his junior year at the Mountain School in Vermont. He loved his time in the mountains of rural Vermont, so he decided to return and pursue an undergraduate degree at Middlebury College. After graduating with a degree in architecture and history, he returned to East Palo Alto and, in May 2014, started working as a volunteer with Canopy, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit that plants and cares for street trees in several South Bay communities. He was hired as a full-time Community Forestry Coordinator in May 2015 to help Canopy establish the Branching Out neighborhood tree-planting program in the underserved community of East Palo Alto. The goal of the program is to plant 500 trees along streets and around homes in East Palo Alto by 2020. These trees are a natural resource that provide numerous community benefits, including improved water quality, decreased air pollution, reduced greenhouse gases, improved public health, and enhanced wildlife habitat and biodiversity.
As a true “people person” and a bilingual member of the community, Uriel is able to transcend barriers and inspire people who are typically ignored or left behind in such programs. Uriel oversees all elements of the Branching Out program, from establishing the initial contacts in the community, to enlisting neighborhood “Tree Champions,” developing the multilingual outreach materials, creating the planting plans, and organizing the planting events. Once the trees are planted, Uriel provides support and bilingual education materials to the community to ensure that the trees are maintained and cared for.
Uriel has also developed a strong interest in conservation biology, and this fall he will be using his vacation time to travel to Panama to participate in a program tracking and studying jaguars in their native jungle habitat.
For more details about sponsorships, please contact Associate Director Judith Katz at 510-528-8550 x105 or judith@baynature.org.
To see photos from last year’s awards dinner, click here.
Meet Bay Nature’s 2016 Local Heroes
“Many of us live in the Bay Area because of its rich natural heritage. And once a year we like to recognize just a few of the many people who are responsible for protecting and stewarding it.” — David Loeb, publisher, Bay Nature
Every year, Bay Nature Institute selects three people whose extraordinary work on behalf of conservation and environmental education in the Bay Area warrants special recognition and appreciation. Following are the three Bay Nature “Local Heroes” for 2016. They were chosen by Bay Nature Institute board and staff from over forty nominations submitted by members of the Bay Area conservation community, and they were honored at Bay Nature’s Annual Awards Dinner on Sunday, March 20, 2016.
This year, we’re also delighted to have presented a fourth award: the Bay Nature Hero Award for a person who has made extraordinary contributions to the success of Bay Nature. The recipient of this award is none other than Bay Nature’s co-founder and local publishing icon Malcolm Margolin.
>> To learn more about the 2017 event, The Tide is Turning: Celebrating San Francisco Bay and Our Local Conservation Heroes, visit baynature17.eventbrite.com.
Conservation Action Award
Andrea Mackenzie, General Manager, Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority (Recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the conservation of the natural landscapes, wildlife, and/or flora of the San Francisco Bay Area, through advocacy, legal action, acquisition, and/or stewardship.)
For more than 25 years, Andrea Mackenzie has been an effective and visionary leader for open space protection in the Bay Area, working at the intersection of urban and open space planning and policy to preserve the region’s natural and working landscapes. She has worked for land conservation agencies and nonprofits around the region including the East Bay Regional Park District, Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, and most recently, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. As General Manager of the OSA, Andrea has opened several new preserves to the public while tripling the revenue and doubling the staff of the agency, all in the service of implementing an ambitious 15-year plan to preserve the most significant remaining open space, habitat, wildlife linkages, and farmland in the South Bay. To secure the resources to implement this vision, Andrea helped guide the campaign for Measure Q in 2014, which ensures $120 million in new funding for the Authority. Her range of experiences has given Andrea a uniquely broad perspective on regional open space issues and opportunities.
Photo: L. Bantley
Environmental Education Award
Allen Fish, Director, Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (Recognizes the achievements of an individual who has made significant contributions to public understanding and awareness of the natural history and ecology of the San Francisco Bay Area, through research, teaching, field trips, journalism, and/or other media.)
Since 1985, Allen Fish has been the director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, a well-respected and successful nonprofit program of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy in cooperation with the National Park Service that carries out scientific research, public education, and informed advocacy for raptors. With a permanent staff of three, six seasonal biologists, and a corps of 300 volunteers dedicated to tracking the state’s largest raptor migration at Hawk Hill on the Marin Headlands, GGRO is a recognized leader in both raptor research and the rapidly growing field of citizen science. Under Allen’s leadership, GGRO has also been dedicated to public outreach and education to spread the raptor gospel: More than 10,000 people visit the Hawk Hill raptor count site every fall, including school groups from around the Bay Area, while Allen himself has written numerous articles, taught classes in raptor biology, and led raptor tours for the California Academy of Sciences.
Photo: Lars Howlett
Youth Engagement Award Naftali Moed, Student Leader, UC Davis/Putah Creek Council (Recognizes an individual, 25 years old or younger, who is making significant contributions in the fields of natural history, stewardship of the natural world, conservation action, and/or environmental education.)
Naftali Moed is a senior at UC Davis earning a degree in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning, with a minor in Landscape Restoration. He grew up in Pacifica, hiking in nearby parklands and reading Bay Nature with his family. As a student at Oceana High School in Pacifica, Naftali continued his love affair with nature by interning with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and founding a school garden in partnership with the Conservancy and Pie Ranch. As a student at Davis, he has pursued his passion for stewardship of natural areas as a leader of the student group Wild Campus, where he forged a partnership with the Putah Creek Council, a community nonprofit that engages students in restoration of the major watershed near campus. He is also the Student Coordinator for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden and was recently selected to be a Student Engagement Fellow for the system-wide UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative. He plans to continue his work for community-based stewardship of wildlands after he graduates in the spring.
Photo: Don Weden
Bay Nature Hero Award Malcolm Margolin, Heyday Books (Recognizes an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the creation, success, and sustainability of the Bay Nature Institute and Bay Nature magazine.)
Malcolm founded Heyday Books in 1974 in order to publish his first book, East Bay Out, a highly original and personal description of the parks of the East Bay Regional Park District. In 1978, Heyday published Malcolm’s best known work, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area, which has been in print ever since and has been recognized by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th Century by a western writer. In 1986, Malcolm founded News from Native California, a quarterly magazine that gives voice to California’s indigenous peoples. Then, in 1997, he began working with David Loeb to start Bay Nature, serving as founding publisher from the magazine’s launch in 2001 until 2004. Now in its 41st year, Heyday publishes 20 titles a year that cover the diverse nature and culture of California, and sponsors dozens of related events around the state. Malcolm will retire from Heyday at the end of 2015.
To see photos from this year’s Local Hero Awards Dinner at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center, click here.
2016 Bay Nature Hero Award Winner
Photo: Don Weden
Perhaps if he hadn’t had to wear a uniform, Malcolm Margolin might have stayed at his job as a seasonal ranger with the East Bay Regional Park District. But instead he left and started writing. And then publishing his writing. And eventually wound up creating an iconic and revered Bay Area publishing house and cultural institution, Heyday Books. Since its founding in 1974 Heyday has published several hundred books that cover the diverse nature and culture of California and sponsored dozens of events and programs that nurture rich interactions between authors, artists, intellectuals, activists, and the public.
Malcolm founded Heyday in order to publish his first book, East Bay Out, a highly original and personal description of the parks and preserves of the East Bay Regional Park District. In 1978, Heyday published Malcolm’s best known work, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area, which has been in print ever since and has been recognized by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th Century by a western writer. In 1986 Malcolm founded News from Native California, a respected quarterly magazine that gives voice to California’s indigenous peoples. Then, in 1997, he teamed up with David Loeb to start Bay Nature, serving as founding publisher of the quarterly magazine from its launch in 2001 until 2004 and then serving on the board of directors of the Bay Nature Institute until 2012.
Bay Nature’s Local Hero Awards recognize individuals in our community whose efforts foster understanding and preservation of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. The 2016 awards were presented at Bay Nature’s Local Hero Awards Dinner in San Francisco on Sunday, March 20, 2016.
Heyday, which became a nonprofit organization in 2004, now publishes 20 titles a year and sponsors dozens of related readings, events, and programs around the state. For his work, Malcolm has received numerous awards, including lifetime achievement awards from the California Studies Association and the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association.
At the end of 2015, after 41 years at the helm of Heyday, Malcolm will announce his retirement, passing the leadership of this prestigious cultural institution on to a new generation. In recognition of his invaluable contributions to both Bay Nature and to the cultural life of the Bay Area, the board and staff of the Bay Nature Institute decided to honor Malcolm with a special Bay Nature Hero Award, to be presented at the organization’s Local Hero Awards dinner on March 20, 2016.
2016 Local Hero Award Winner for Environmental Education
Allen Fish is a man of diverse interests and passions, but being director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory for the past three decades has given him license to engage many of those: spending time outside; learning about birds, bugs, and plants; writing and story-telling; being around interesting, passionate people; science education; wildlife protection; and raptors.
Allen was born and raised on the Peninsula, but spent most of his summers as a child in the Sierra Nevada, where his extended family managed a biological reserve for the University of California. He graduated from UC Davis with a degree in zoology and then worked for several years conducting bird studies for various federal agencies. In 1985, as he was returning to UC Davis for graduate study in science education, he heard about a brand new three-year raptor banding program at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and applied to work there. He was hired and has never left.
Bay Nature’s Local Hero Awards recognize individuals in our community whose efforts foster understanding and preservation of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. The 2016 awards were presented at Bay Nature’s Local Hero Awards Dinner in San Francisco on Sunday, March 20, 2016.
Under Allen’s leadership, the program morphed into the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, a well-respected nonprofit program of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy that carries out scientific research, public education, and informed advocacy for raptors in cooperation with the National Park Service. With a permanent staff of three, six seasonal biologists, and a corps of 300 volunteers dedicated to tracking the state’s largest raptor migration at Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands, GGRO is a recognized leader in both raptor research and the rapidly growing field of citizen science. Allen and his team have developed protocols for banding, counting, and tracking raptors, and published over 35 papers in academic journals that have contributed significantly to the world’s understanding of raptor migration and behavior.
But GGRO isn’t primarily an academic institution; public outreach and education to spread the raptor gospel is the heart of organization’s mission: More than 10,000 people visit the “Hawkwatch” program’s raptor count on Hawk Hill every fall, including school groups from around the Bay Area. In addition, Allen and his team fan out to make presentations to a wide range of educational institutions, and community groups. Allen himself has written numerous articles about raptors, taught classes in raptor biology, led raptor tours for the California Academy of Sciences, and served as host for the 2015 annual conference of the Raptor Research Foundation. He is also a cofounder of Raptors Are The Solution (R.A.T.S.), a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to educating the public about the dangers to wildlife (particularly predators such as raptors) posed by the use of rat poison in the environment. A resident of Berkeley, Allen also loves old string instruments, dragonflies, his wife, and his two teens.
Julia Clothier, Point Reyes National Seashore Association
Every year, Bay Nature Institute selects three people whose extraordinary work on behalf of conservation and environmental education in the Bay Area warrants special recognition and appreciation. This year’s Local Hero for Environmental Education is Julia Clothier, Education Director of the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. This award recognizes the achievements of an individual who has made significant contributions to public understanding and awareness of the natural history and ecology of the San Francisco Bay Area, through research, teaching, field trips, journalism, and/or other media.
Our three Bay Nature “Local Heroes” for 2015 were chosen by Bay Nature Institute board and staff from more than four dozen nominations submitted by members of the Bay Area conservation community. They’ll be honored at our Annual Awards Dinner on March 22, 2015. >> Learn more and RSVP
Environmental Education award winner Julia Clothier. Photo: PRNSA
If Julia Clothier had her way, every child would grow up with the opportunity to experience nature on a regular basis, and so she has made it her mission in life to promote access to, and engagement with, the natural world for young people. Now, she pursues this mission as the Director of the Clem Miller Environmental Education Center in Point Reyes National Seashore, where she oversees environmental and outdoor education programs that reach 2,200 youth ever year. This includes 40 overnight programs and numerous half-day field trips during the school year, a nine-week summer camp, and an annual natural history “intensive” course for educators and youth program leaders. In 2009 Julia created the Young Stewards Youth Scholarship Fund, which has raised over $500,000 to make these field-based education and wilderness recreation programs available to underserved youth.
Julia grew up sailing and bodysurfing in Southern California and went on to earn degrees in Botany and Natural History from Sonoma State University while writing, illustrating, and publishing an ethnobotanical field guide to common plants on Sonoma Mountain. She then worked for 11 years as director of field education and land stewardship programs at the university’s 400-acre Fairfield Osborn Preserve on Sonoma Mountain. In 2008, Julia was hired by the Point Reyes National Seashore Association to develop and maximize the park’s potential as an ideal setting for environmental education for children from around the Bay Area and Northern California. Though most of her time is now spent in administration, fundraising, and curriculum development, Julia gets to be in the field with kids during the nine-week summer camp, and as the lead teacher for the yearly teacher training course.
Our three Local Heroes will be honored at Bay Nature’s Annual Awards Dinner on Sunday, March 22. For more details on the event and to purchase tickets, visit:
The Bay Nature Institute is a Berkeley-based nonprofit media organization dedicated to exploring, celebrating, and protecting the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area, in print, online, in the field, on the air.
Oakland’s Bug Guy Wants You to Like Bugs Too
Eddie Dunbar is the guy you can call when you’re having the most pressing bug identification question. He’ll know the answer.
A former insect exterminator for product testing at Clorox, Dunbar has since found his life’s calling as the founder of the Oakland-based Insect Sciences Museum of California (ISMC), an organization that that promotes insect literacy in a world that’s mostly repulsed by anything with more than four legs.
Dunbar taps into people’s strong feelings about insects.
“The same impulse that makes us want to squash a bug can also inspire us to pull out our loupes and a field guide,” said Dunbar, a mostly self-trained insect expert.
Oddly enough, you can’t make an easy living showing off bugs. So Dunbar’s day job is in the City of Oakland’s public works agency, where he heads the technology learning center. And of course, he can’t check his entomophilia at the door. In an agency better known for laying down asphalt and fixing sewer pipes, Dunbar has used his position to create insect habitat on the city’s expanse of public lands.
And he’s impressed people along the way.
“I met Eddie when he was in parking enforcement for the city of Oakland,” said Jim Ryugo, the Public Works building services manager. “Then I discovered he was a bug guy, had a website, and I thought, ‘Wow! You do all of this in your spare time?’”
A Madagascar hissing cockroach at the ISMC. Photo: Eddie Dunbar/ISMC.
The Pollinator Posse
Insect-lovers have a habit of finding each other, even within a large city bureaucracy. Tora Rocha, Oakland’s parks supervisor, joined forces with Dunbar when she started a group called the Pollinator Posse.
“At first it was just me raising caterpillars at home,” said Rocha. “It didn’t start out terribly structured, but other people working for the city got interested after they heard me talking about it and wanted to do it, too.”
Rocha turned to Dunbar for help in launching pollinator gardens for butterflies and bees at Lakeside Park and elsewhere. The program also encourages people to raise native butterflies and other insects that are critical to pollinating flowering plants.
“Eddie helped us get the Pollinator Posse off the ground by promoting us through social media and generally getting the word out about our group,” Rocha said. “He’s an amazing communicator and he’s great at connecting people. I had no idea so many people were into bugs before I met him.”
A Johnson jumper. Photo: Eddie Dunbar/ISMC.
The goal is to create habitat corridors in the city’s urban core for insects and other species to move around. Dunbar said public works and ISMC dovetail nicely in this regard.
“The GIS mapping I use to send out work orders to public works employees has translated well into mapping locations where pipevine is planted. This way the ISMC can track potential food corridors for the pipevine swallowtail, a type of butterfly we’re trying to re-introduce to the Bay Area.”
A skittery path
Dunbar said his interest in insects began when he was a kid, but his career has taken a long and skittery path. At age 21, he was tossed out of UC Berkeley while working (too slowly) towards an entomology degree. Distraction was apparently the problem.
“Once I got to college and realized there were all these classes I could take to learn about how we interact as humans, that became a major focus and another passion,” recalls Dunbar. “I was taking way more sociology than entomology classes – the dean didn’t like that!”
Somewhere along the way he worked for Clorox, testing out products for insect extermination. Breeding mosquitoes and 27 strains of German cockroaches was too much to bear, even for this bug-lover. Apparently, no one likes mosquitoes.
“It was a kind of an emotional hazard walking into the breeding room knowing I would get bitten,” Dunbar said. “But I got to work with bugs, and ended up learning quite a bit from the researchers and pest management people I worked with.”
In 1994 he was brought on board as a senior word processor specialist for UC Berkeley’s insect biology department (no one hires word processors anymore). Then he won a grant to start a program called CityBugs and began cataloguing insects on a website and posting photos taken through a microscope to serve as a field guide to Bay Area insects.
A pungent ground beetle at the ISMC. Photo: Eddie Dunbar/ISMC.
“We were the best online resource for bug identification for a while. I would find my pictures all over the place on other people’s sites,” he said.
Reaching the people
Now he teaches people about insects and promotes citizen-science entomology through hikes, lectures, Facebook, a permanent display at the Rotary Nature Center at Lake Merritt, and the ISMC website and roving tabletop museum.
Dunbar also created an outdoor insect-based science curriculum for elementary school students that led to professional development with teachers.
“I called it ‘Take it Outside’ since that’s the first thing a teacher usually says when a student walks into a room carrying a bug,” Dunbar said. “This program was about encouraging educators to take their lesson plan outdoors. There’s an amazing variety of life you can find in a schoolyard.”
Citizen scientists and amateur photographers are the force behind ISMC’s latest ambition: a 5-year project that will result in the Insects of the San Francisco Bay Area field guide in 2017. Last year marked a revision of the Lake Merritt and Greater Oakland Insects digital guide, consisting of 229 color photographs identifying 144 insects commonly found in the area.
When asked if he’s ever run into a dearth of public interest in insects, Dunbar shakes his head ‘No.’
“In all my years of doing this, what surprises me most is that people from all walks of life have some ‘bug story’ they yearn to tell,” he said. “Whether they’re a die-hard bugger or an entomophobe, something about insects inspires them to tell it all when the occasion arises.”
Do you like bugs too? Get involved in Dunbar’s Insect Sciences Museum of California.
Finding biodiversity in a bucket
“Okay, this is going to be really messy,” said David Liittschwager, hauling a green-rimmed frame outlining the shape of one cubic foot to the swampy edge of a pond in the Marin Headlands.
Of course, that was pretty good news to the surrounding fifth graders.
“Messy is good,” said one boy.
You may remember Liittschwager as the One Cubic Foot guy, the National Geographic photographer who took succinct snapshots of Earth’s biodiversity by plopping down his cubic foot frames in nine locations around the world, including the waters beneath the Golden Gate Bridge (those will be featured in our July issue).
These days, following a photo book on the project that was published in November 2012, Liittschwager is part of a pilot program to crowdsource the concept, now relaunched as the BioCube.
In partnership with the Smithsonian Institute and NatureBridge, an environmental education nonprofit with a center in the Marin Headlands, Liittschwager is hoping to craft a program that will allow people to set up their own cubic feet and gather data that would add to a wider body of research into biodiversity.
He’s pretty sure that the power of one cubic foot will stick in the public’s consciousness.
“It’s a personal sized piece of the world that you can look at, observe closely, and revel in,” said Liittschwager. “What we want to be able to do is have a much broader reach.”
A bucket reveals some of the contents of the biocube. Photo: Alison Hawkes.
He tested the project during a two-week pilot this spring in the murky waters at the edge of Rodeo Pond, to the east of Rodeo Lagoon. The school children, on this particular day from Sacramento and Hayward, were grouped into teams. Each team got a cube and each debated the finer points of where to best set down their cubes. Then they waited to see what flew, swam or crawled into the confines of the biocube, journaling and photographing their observations (among their tools was an underwater camera). The final step was to extract everything from the biocube — vegetation, water, mud and all — and bring it back to the lab at NatureBridge to catalogue and sort.
“The kids go through with a spoon and pipette and pull everything out and sort it until you end up having the entirety of the diversity of this pond laid out from that cube,” said Seabird McKeon, a Smithsonian biodiversity scientist, who works under zoologist and biocube researcher Chris Meyer.
The kids also learned how to sample DNA so it could be sent in for species verification.
The big question for the adults at the pond was how to enable school kids to generate useful scientific data, and help them learn about biodiversity.
“We’re currently trying to scale it up and find the best way of doing it,” said McKeon.
Apparently, the biocube concept works just as well in backyards as it does in national parks.
“Diversity is fantastic in a coral reef or rainforest, but that isn’t only where it is,” McKeon said. “It’s when you take the time and slow down and look is when you find diversity.”
Back at the pond, one group of kids was getting schooled on how to be patient observers.
“A couple of you sit on the bank and see if you see any flying insects,” said Liittschwager. “We know there are some spiders nearby so we might have to wait and see.”
Liittschwager said he’s impressed by what the kids have done so far.
“Without direction they’re coming up with lists and drawings that I can recognize,” he said. “They have enough information to be able to communicate. They’re all calling the same plant the same thing.”
But Liittschwager knows how ambitious each square foot can be.
“The dirty little secret is that I spent two weeks to a month on nine different cubes around the world and I never finished one and I’ve had a lot of help,” he said.
In other words, the biodiversity is so great, that it’s an almost insurmountable task to complete, even for the experts. So what’s a school kid supposed to do?
“We give them a taste,” said Liittschwager. “It’s dipping a net in the water to see if it’s an interesting place for further exploration.
He plans to make free video tutorials to get people started. NatureBridge and the Smithsonian Institute are hoping to win grant money that will allow them to establish a biocube program in multiple environmental education centers around the country.
Alison Hawkes is the online editor of Bay Nature.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Alison Young grew up in Lafayette, in the East Bay. After earning her BA in biology from Swarthmore College, Alison spent six years teaching environmental education in San Mateo County. She then returned to school, receiving an MA from Humboldt State University, where her research focused on the rocky intertidal communities of the California coast. Alison was subsequently hired by the Greater Farallones Marine Sanctuary to run its intertidal monitoring program, followed by an offer from Cal Academy. She now also serves on the steering committee of the national Citizen Science Association and lives in Sonoma.
Rebecca Johnson grew up in Thousand Oaks, California then migrated to the Bay Area for undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley. She received her MA from San Francisco State and her PhD in invertebrate zoology and marine biology from UC Santa Cruz. She began working at the California Academy of Sciences as an undergraduate 20 years ago and along with her citizen science work, continues her research on the evolutionary history of nudibranchs and, more generally, how intertidal species composition is changing due to climate change. Rebecca now lives in San Francisco.
