CCAL.UCSC.EDU - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Student & Younger Lagoon Reserve Manager
Beth Howard is both a PhD student in the Conservation Action Lab, and the Manager of Younger Lagoon Reserve, a 72-acre reserve that is part of the University of California's Natural Reserve System.
Beth's passion for the outdoors grew from a childhood spent catching frogs and turtles in the woods, springs, and cypress swamps of Florida.
Beth received her bachelor's degree in biology and environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2001. After graduating from UCSC, she worked on sustainable agriculture projects in California and Vermont, and later on plant ecology research projects, primarily in California. Prior to her appointment as the Manager of Younger Lagoon Reserve, Beth worked as the Steward of UCSC's Campus Natural Reserve, and as a researcher on UCSC's Forest Ecology Research Plot, where she conducted long term monitoring of a coastal forest.
At Younger Lagoon Reserve she is responsible for facilitating research, teaching and public education at the reserve. Additionally, she coordinates biological and environmental monitoring, is responsible for compliance and annual reporting, and administers the reserve's native habitat restoration program.
For her PhD project, Beth is studying the long-term success of native habitat restoration projects on the Central Coast.
Don Croll received a B.S. in biology from the University of California, Davis, M.S. in Marine Sciences from Moss Landing Marine Labs, and a Ph.D. in Marine Sciences from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is a Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He co-founded Island Conservation, a science-based NGO with 35 employees and an annual budget of 5 million.
I am a conservation biologist interested in using the best available ecological, social, and economic information to improve the way conservation efforts are planned and implemented. I completed my Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California-Santa Cruz in 2015, where my research focused on quantifying the impacts of invasive alien mammals on globally threatened insular vertebrate species, and on the development of optimization tools to prioritize invasive mammal eradications on islands. I also investigated national-level relationships between conservation costs, governance, and human rights to better understand how prioritizing conservation based on cost alone may lead to lower success rates for conservation projects as well as unintended negative outcomes for local people.
Prior to beginning my Ph.D. research, I worked in the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, NY, where I contributed to conservation-related research projects, museum exhibits, and education initiatives. I have conducted fieldwork in the eastern and western continental US, Hawaii, Alaska, and Costa Rica. I earned my bachelor's degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale University in 2004.
Harmony C. Patricio received her B.A. in Environmental Studies from UC, Santa Cruz, her M.P.A in Environment Science and Policy from Columbia University in New York, and recently completed her Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. She has worked in international conservation research and management for more than 10 years, including in Central America and Southeast Asia. She spent six years working with regional collaborators in the Mekong River Basin to conserve freshwater species. She serves on the Freshwater Conservation Committee of the IUCN Species Survival Commission and is Co-Chair of the Freshwater Specialist Group for the World Commission on Protected Areas. She was a visiting scholar at the Conservation Action Lab at UC Santa Cruz.
Jessie Beck is a PhD student in the Conservation Action Lab in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, and is co-advised by Dr. Myra Finkelstein. Jessie is also a seabird ecologist and program manager for the non-profit organization Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge.
Jessie's work focuses on fisheries bycatch and threats to seabird populations. She leads the collaborative NOAA Seabird Bycatch Necropsy Program in the U.S. and investigates seabird fishery interactions in Chile. She is also co-manages the Año Nuevo Seabird Conservation Program in California. Since 2010, Jessie has worked on a wide range of seabird conservation issues including fisheries overlap, California coastal ecology, disease surveillance, and plastic ingestion. Jessie is also passionate about fostering international collaborations for migratory species and mentoring future generations of conservation scientists.
Kelly joined the Conservation Action Lab in 2002 to run the Center for Integrated Marine Technologies Wind to Whales program. In 2005 Kelly started a Master's Degree in Ocean Sciences using seabird data from the Wind to Whales program and the BeachCOMBERS beach walk program. Upon completion of her degree Kelly continued to work in the lab on the Conservation Measures project and the Threatened Island Biodiversity Database project. Kelly developed multiple databases still used by CAL including the Threatened Island Biodiversity (TIB) database, the Conservation Monitoring database, and the Island Eradication database. Kelly also is the project manager for the Mobulid Ray Research Project where her & Don have been tagging and tracking Mobulid Rays in the Gulf of California since 2005. Currently, she has expanded the TIB database to include seabird demographic data and seabird population sizes on islands for inclusion in the Seabird Population Viability Analysis project. In addition, she assists graduate students with database management, data analyses, and map creation.