Better Know an Educator: Ray Bransfield

In the grand web of environmental conservation, Ray Bransfield has found his niche. Bransfield is a Senior Biologist for the Palms Springs Department of Fish and Wildlife, where he has served for the past 33 years. He works under a specific section of the Endangered Species Act to assess the environmental impacts of and put holding actions on prospective development projects in order to keep threatened species from sliding past the point of return. Bransfield’s primary focus is the desert tortoise. When he thinks about the tortoise, whose population in the Mojave Desert is struggling to survive due in large part to industrial developments and collisions with highway and off-highway vehicles, he reflects on the importance of preserving a world where the tortoises are still there for the next generation. For Bransfield, it is not just about the desert tortoise though, but also about maintaining the biodiversity of the Mojave Desert and keeping wild places everywhere.

Bransfield focuses on the positive things he can do for the tortoise, and aims to best use biology, the law, and cooperation with people from all sides to protect ecosystems and endangered species. He affirms that at times the legal system is an important aspect of achieving conservation goals, and also believes that education is a critical piece to this puzzle. If the public appreciates and cares for their desert ecosystems they will decrease activities that threaten habitat and demand that companies take responsibility for protecting the environment. 

By Abby Popenoe

Meet Our Speakers: Doug Davis

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is the largest concentrated solar facility in the world. Located in California’s Mojave Desert at the Nevada border, the solar plant helps meet California’s electricity needs and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 640,000 tons annually. While this transition to renewable energy sources is laudable, the context is more complicated: the site of the solar plant is prime habitat for the endangered desert tortoise and is part of the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds. Environmental manager Doug Davis of NRG Energy oversees the nation’s largest private-sector desert tortoise and bird protection programs to reduce the solar plant’s impact to the desert ecosystem.

Doug attributes his graying hair to the slew of unexpected issues that have increased the solar plant’s impact to local and endangered species.  Yet he is committed to maximizing the intactness of the ecosystem that now coexists with the solar plant. To do so, Doug’s team extends to federal agencies such as the BLM, USGS, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife; dozens of biologists working on longitudinal tortoise and bird survival studies; and conscientious solar plant employees. Though there is still much to do, Doug is dedicated to an intact desert ecosystem because he understands the value these species’ survival for the desert and the world: “There’s a reason I live in a rural small community—[so] that I can listen to the coyotes at night and see the stars. I don’t want that to go away.” 

By Elizabeth Greenfield

Meet Our Speakers: Tanya Henderson

In the town of Shoshone, California—population: 31—residents know conservation intimately. Shoshone is home to the Amargosa Conservancy, a small organization devoted to the conservation of the Amargosa River Basin and its biodiverse ecosystems. Spearheading this immense effort is Tanya Henderson, executive director of the Conservancy. After graduating from Whitman College in 2005, Henderson began to focus on conservation, eventually arriving in Shoshone and becoming the Amargosa Conservancy’s stewardship program manager. Over the summer, she transitioned into the role of executive director. Tanya Henderson and the Conservancy currently focus on the conservation of two endangered species in the area: the Amargosa vole and the desert pupfish. As their species names suggest, neither of these animals are charismatic megafauna, like wolves or bison. Henderson, however, still believes firmly in the need for conservation of all endangered species. She asks, “why not do what we can to save a species,” saying that such organisms are “life on the planet, and we should care about those things.”. However, one obstacle continues to make the Conservancy’s work difficult. Like many federal agencies focused on conservation, it’s difficult for the Amargosa Conservancy to find money to complete projects. Henderson recognizes this impediment to conservation, saying that “funding is crazy…it costs a lot do that kind of consistent work.”

By Fields Ford

Meet Our Speakers: Alejandra Calvo-Fonesca

“You’re going to have to swim!” These were the words of Alejandra “Alex” Calvo-Fonesca when our boat ran out of gas in Ciénega de Santa Clara, a vast marsh of recycled irrigation water in Sonora, México. Her mischievous smile told us she was joking, and she quickly produced a paddle with which to rescue us. Wildlife Survey Coordinator for ProNatura, Alex brims with enthusiasm for her job. “It’s like school,” she says. “I’m always learning. Sometimes I have a theory, and my coworkers know what’s going on in the place. We correlate the two and learn. That’s what I love.” When Alex majored in aquaculture at Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, she planned to design ornamental aquaria. Instead, she began working at a shrimp farm and surveying birds for ProNatura, a nonprofit that has been collaborating with governments and local communities to restore the Colorado River Delta since 1990.  Now in her ninth year, Alex has risen from fieldwork to the office. “I knew nothing about biology when I started, but they provided a workshop,” Alex explains. She conducted vegetation and wildlife surveys, learning to identify marsh birds such as sora, least bittern, and the endangered Yuma clapper-rail by ear. Alex’s curiosity has earned her a vast and growing base of knowledge. She can point out native cattails and introduced cane, bird species in English and Spanish, and even the way out of a mazelike marsh when your boat runs out of gas.

By Nina Finley

Meet Our Speakers: Bonnie McKinney

Standing in the shade of the porch in a pair of beautifully worn cowboy boots, Bonnie McKinney introduces herself quickly. She runs though the professional paths she has followed until she arrived here, at the Adams Ranch in Southern Texas, as the Wildlife Coordinator.  McKinney’s work takes place on a large piece of land owned by The El Carmen Land and Conservation Company.  This private conservation area sits strategically between the Texas Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, Big Bend National Park and a CEMEX conservation project in the Sierra Del Carmen Mountains of Mexico. In this important transnational wildlife corridor, it is McKinney’s job to document animals, protect habitats and facilitate projects done on this land. Bonnie McKinney was the right woman to hire for this job. She had worked on CEMEX’s conservation project in Mexico for the 14 years prior and before that was employed by Texas Parks and Wildlife.  Work in the outdoors is what has come most naturally to McKinney who grew up hunting and fishing in Virginia. She says of herself, “I was outside my whole life. I was in the creek catching minnows and my mom was always trying to get me inside the house to learn to cook, and that never happened.” McKinney has made a career out of what she loves most and is helping to protect the deeply unique environment of these desert borderlands in doing so. 

By Grace Butler

Meet Our Speakers: Josiah Austin

“We have to manage conservation,” Josiah Austin tells the westies over a bowl of cereal. His 30,000-acre Adams Ranch in Big Bend, Texas is surrounded on three sides by conservation areas–National Park on one side, Wildlife Management on another, and a privately-held international corporate conservation area to the southeast, straddling the US-Mexico border. Austin began buying up Texas ranch properties in 1982 with the intention of restoring landscape and habitat. “When we first started doing watershed restoration, we didn’t really know what we were doing, but we learned quickly.” He and his wife moved over a thousand miles from their home in Manhattan to a double-wide on El Coronado Ranch in Texas. “I don’t think my wife had any clue what a double-wide even was,” Austin smiled. Josiah is tall and thin, and even when he’s wearing Crocs he appears authoritative. He dropped out of high school, talked his way into college, and graduated from the University of Denver with a degree in finance. After a career in the stock market, he went west to pursue his passion for open spaces. “I guess my love for open space started on my family’s farm in Maryland,” he explained, “on New Hampshire Avenue.” At the Adams Ranch Headquarters in Big Bend, it seems Austin’s got all the open space he could ever want. 

Better Know an Educator: Todd Wilkinson

“If your mother says she loves you, you had better check it out.” This is author and journalist Todd Wilkinson’s mindset when he reports on stories across the American West. From the history of Lewis and Clark on the Missouri River to the politics of life on the Pine Ridge reservation, and the “New West” paradise that is becoming Jackson Hole, WY, Todd is well-versed in the environmental and social issues of the West. He has been published in Christian Science Monitor and National Geographic, and he previously wrote a column called “The New West” for the Jackson Hole News & Guide. After nearly twenty years in Jackson, he has moved on to other journalistic endeavors in Bozeman, MT. Todd began his career as a violent crime reporter in Chicago and has developed an impressive resume since, writing “Last Stand,” a critically-acclaimed biography of Ted Turner and authoring a collaborative work with photographer Thomas Mangelson called “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek.” His work is so diverse in fact, that some have mistaken him for two different people sharing the same alias. In his writing, Todd seeks out the complexity inherent in western environmentalism, showing that there are usually more than two clearly-defined sides to any issue. It is clear however, from reading and talking with Todd that he cares deeply for the lands of our Western United States, and seeks to share the full story of them with his readers and those lucky enough to get to listen.

By: Maggie Baker