Background and Mission Statement
Born in Sweden and raised outside Stockholm, Natural-Science Gymnasium prepared me well for academia. My connection to the natural world during those formative years was what ultimately lead me to pursue Wildlife Management at Humboldt State University (HSU). Tailoring coursework around Upland Game, Waterfowl Management, Wildlife Diseases and Range Management, I had dreams of working in Africa. Confronting reality, I was lucky to get on with the US Forest Service (USFS) after graduating from HSU in 1988.
Part of the team of U.S Forestry Service biological technicians that in 1988 field tested the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (USFWS) Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) survey protocol in Western Oregon, my resume that I was involved in a spectrum of fish and wildlife habitat improvements, as well as fighting forest fires. Having the privlige of working with many pioneers in New Forestry, the thirty somewhat months I spent on the Rouge River and Mt. Hood National Forests set the course of my career as a forest-wildlife biologist. However, my early ambition to wear the green uniform of the USFS was not to be. Retained by a private forestry consultant in Eureka to set up their wildlife-consulting program, my timing could not have been better.
Born in Sweden and raised outside Stockholm, Natural-Science Gymnasium prepared me well for academia. My connection to the natural world during those formative years was what ultimately lead me to pursue Wildlife Management at Humboldt State University (HSU). Tailoring coursework around Upland Game, Waterfowl Management, Wildlife Diseases and Range Management, I had dreams of working in Africa. Confronting reality, I was lucky to get on with the US Forest Service (USFS) after graduating from HSU in 1988.
Part of the team of U.S Forestry Service biological technicians that in 1988 field tested the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (USFWS) Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) survey protocol in Western Oregon, my resume that I was involved in a spectrum of fish and wildlife habitat improvements, as well as fighting forest fires. Having the privlige of working with many pioneers in New Forestry, the thirty somewhat months I spent on the Rouge River and Mt. Hood National Forests set the course of my career as a forest-wildlife biologist. However, my early ambition to wear the green uniform of the USFS was not to be. Retained by a private forestry consultant in Eureka to set up their wildlife-consulting program, my timing could not have been better.
With the 1990 listing of the NSO as a federally threatened species, nearly every timber harvest plan (THP) in northern California would need surveying. Soon joined by the marbled murrelet, was well as a host of other State "listed" species, the last quarter century has seen a complete "C" change in the manner agencies conducted environmental review. As Senior Biologist with Natural Resources Management Corporation, I oversaw field surveys, on-the-ground management and regulatory THP compliance throughout the "Timber Wars". Supervising a staff of resource professionals, I developed a method for assessing cumulative biological impacts for THPs that later became an industry standard.
Independent since 1997, I have continued to provide public and private land managers with biological field surveys and environmental analysis. Long troubled by environmental review process that seemes excessively complicated and needlessly expensive, one questionable CDFW consultation dating back to 2016 started me looking into the legal basis behind behind their authority. Determined to do what I can to push back against regulatory overreach, for those with the dogged persistence to read my petition to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL), it a story of low level agency specialists relying on anecdotal information in an effort to curtail timber harvesting. Erring on the side of caution to misrepresent the status of wildlife occurrences, taking away private property rights in a manner that is conter productive because it gives wildlife conservation a bad name.