Meet our Guests: Samantha Arthur

Samantha Arthur

Conservation Project Manager, Audubon California

Sacramento, CA

11/14/18

Sami Arthur stands, neck craned back, below a cotton candy sky as waterfowl take flight from the ponds surrounding us. Birds turn into black specks as they rise, joining the flow of thousands of others to the neighboring rice fields. Sami picks out Snow Geese, Egrets, and Pinstripe Ducks from the nearly liquid mass of birds with an expert’s eye. But Sami has not always been into birds. Upon getting her current job at the California Audubon Society, she had to study up on birds, but this was part of the allure of her position as Program Director: “I love that sort of learning.” Before her current position she described herself as a “fish person.” She graduated from Whitman with an Environmental Studies—Biology degree and wrote her thesis on salmon populations. She attended graduate school and debated getting her PhD, but decided that she was more interested in community engagement and ground-level conservation than research.

One of her first jobs was with a land trust in Northern California, where she learned that working with farmers and landowners on conservation projects was what she was excited about. Sami met with us at the Davis Ranch outside Colusa, just north of Sacramento, and shared her work with tri-colored blackbirds and groundwater recharge. Both of these projects involve engagement from the agricultural community, which Sami emphasizes as one of the reasons she loves her job and stays engaged. Sami explains that on projects, “I speak for the birds,” but also emphasizes the importance of making sure conservation works well for everyone involved.

By Clara Hoffman

Meet our Guests: Ray Bransfield and Peter Sanzenbacher

Ray Bransfield

Biologist, USFWS

Ventura, CA

Peter Sanzenbacher

Biologist, USFWS

Yucca Valley, CA

11/11/18

The Dumont Dunes ORV area in Death Valley is not especially picturesque. The dun hills are scabbed by tire tracks and there are few plants, leaving the dust and sand free to be flung about by the regularly passing winds.

Ray Bransfield and Peter Sanzenbacher, employees of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), squinted into the day’s wind and struggled to be heard over the sound of the child’s dirt bike that buzzed wide circles around us. Historically, local ORV clubs came to the dunes to race and ride illegally. As multiple-use pressure mounted on management agencies, the dunes became a designated ORV area in recognition of this historical usage. But, as we asked Ray, why? Why reward illegal recreation with an official designation?

If you were to follow Ray’s thumb across the highway, you might find an endangered desert tortoise wending its leisurely way through the sagebrush. These creatures, resilient and rare, face an embattled future in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts against long odds of habitat fragmentation and degradation. ORV recreationists, notably, have been known to accidentally crush the slow-moving tortoises—their desert camouflage, while effective protection against natural predators, proves their undoing in the face of children on ATVs.

Much of Ray’s and Peter’s work has been to mitigate these instances in which recreation impacts wildlife. Desert tortoises are not the only potential victims: gesticulating in excitement, Peter provided an animated explanation of the spadefoot toad, which, mistaking the rumble of an ATV motor for the sound of thunder, will rise from its subterranean refuge in hopes of rain. As Ray explained, Dumont Dunes are a sacrifice zone, a place where extractive uses are concentrated to preserve habitat elsewhere.

Ray is approaching his retirement after decades with the USFWS, while Peter still has much of his career left ahead of him, and their work provides some hope that future reconciliation between recreation and conservation of public lands might move at a pace faster than a desert tortoise’s.

By Noah Dunn

Photos by Abby Hill

Meet our Guests: Graham Chisholm and Jon Christensen

Graham Chisholm

Senior Policy Advisor, Conservation Strategy Group

San Francisco, CA

Jon Christensen

Professor of Environmental Humanities, UCLA

Los Angeles, CA

11/12/18

Next to a stone house in a small canyon in southern California, buffeted by wind, Semester in the West met with Jon Christensen and Graham Chisholm, an author and environmentalist, respectively.  Graham Chisholm has spent much of his life in the conservation world of California, working as the head of conservation for the California branch of the Nature Conservancy, and now as an independent consultant helping small environmental non-profits get established.  One of the biggest lessons which he has taken with him through his work in the conservation sector, has been that “to be human, you have to think that things can get better”.  It is with this optimism that Graham sees the future of the environmental movement: green spaces in cities are as influential as our national parks in informing a person’s view of what nature is. 

Jon, tall and wearing an inquisitive smile as he speaks, has spent much of his life as a writer.  With a writing history including a stint as a contributing writer at High Country News, he is currently a professor of Environmental Humanities at UCLA.  There he tries to tell his students to find stories that don’t close in “dead-end standoffs”, a lesson he learned at HCN, and that the most important thing your writing can do is to have an impact.  He explains one of the most important lessons he gained from a lifetime of writing: you have to let things have a point of view, and an agenda in order for their impact be felt.       

Both Graham and Jon, though past middle age, and having worked in their respective fields for many years, remain positive in their thoughts for the future. And as they both said, we should look forward to the future as well. 

By David Dregallo

Photos by Jessie Brandt

Meet our Guests: Susan Sorrells

Susan Sorrells

Town Manager

Shoshone, CA

11/12/18

 “We were just scrambling, those of us who wanted to stay, to have some kind of economic base… We consciously made the decision to move from tourism to eco-tourism.”

Susan Sorrells, born and raised in Shoshone, California, is now the leading force in bringing environmental and economic life back into the small town of. After the closure of railroad and mining industries which once brought riches to the town, Shoshone is now revising its priorities. “It’s a clean slate, so to speak…it was a mining area historically, so for a long time (environmental) places weren’t valued…Most of us are here because we love the land…we revel in being a community that interacts and supports one another, and we’re hoping to incorporate healthy communities into our environmental work that we do.”

Partnering with the Amargosa Conservancy, Susan’s hopes for environmental consciousness and eco-tourism have come alive. Just within the last decade, the accidental discovery of natural springs and endangered Shoshone Pupfish on Susan’s land have led to wetland restoration and legally protected environmental sanctuaries for multiple threatened species. “Those of us here really have an opportunity to mold how we so call ‘develop’…in Shoshone, we’ve chosen to develop by incorporating the natural resources,” says Susan, excited and proud of how far the town has come.

By Hannah Morel

Photos by Amara Killen

Meet our Guests: Tanya Henderson

Tanya Henderson

Executive Director, Amargosa Conservancy

Shoshone, CA

11/10/18

Tanya Henderson, a funky and driven transplant to the Mojave Desert from California’s Bay Area, leads the Amargosa River Conservancy. After graduating from Whitman College in 2005, Tanya sought out ways to fulfill her passion for conservation, bringing her to the small town of Shoshone, California (population 31). Tanya and the Conservancy strive to protect the wilds, waters, and communities of the Amargosa River Basin which starts at Yucca Mountain (a proposed nuclear waste storage site) and ends in the lowest point in Death Valley. It contains the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, home to more endemic species than any other place in the United States.

In an area with so many critical habitats and endangered species, Tanya and the Conservancy are making huge environmental strides. A small organization, they work to involve the communities of the basin in important decision making, hold educational events, develop work projects that connect people to the land, and monitor endangered species populations. While with Tanya , Semester in the West participated in one of the Conservancy’s work projects, removing invasive cattails from important desert pupfish habitat and sweeping away off highway vehicle (OHV) tracks in the desert to prevent further destruction of desert soils.

Tanya has creatively found ways to engage and involve the communities near and far in protecting the unique water source that is the Amargosa and the desert oases it nurtures. Tanya’s dedication and obsession for desert ecosystems is exemplified in her work to protect the Amargosa vole and the desert pupfish species endemic to the Mojave. Tanya and the Conservancy hope to protect their small oasis while connecting it to the larger desert ecosystem through education, science, and community involvement.

By Whitney Rich

Photos by Nina Moore