People-Collaboration

Staff | Steering Committee | Collaboration

 

Peter

Peter Brastow, our Founding Director, created Nature in the City in 2005 to build, strengthen and unify the movement to conserve San Francisco's natural areas and biodiversity, and to catalyze ecological restoration and stewardship by connecting urban people with local nature where they live. As the former National Park Service Ecological Restoration Specialist for the Presidio, Peter entered the fray of the city's environmental activist community with a unique set of skills and experience as an urban natural resource manager and community stewardship coordinator.

 

Ellie

Ellie Billings, our Executive & Programs Assistant, does absolutely everything, including general administration, media outreach and publicity, budget and database management. Ellie is the brains (and the brawn) behind the Nature in the City newsletter, and she manages natureinthecity.org. Ellie is now a geography student at SFSU. She came to us originally from City College's Center for Habitat Restoration.

 

Iris Clearwater, our Stewardship Coordinator, is leading the charge on cultivating community participation in our ecological stewardship projects, particularly the Green Hairstreak Corridor, and helping build our stewardship program to be a comprehensive community resource for San Francisco. Iris has many years of experience in project management, is an artist, and also works at Laney College in Oakland.

Brian Harvey, our San Francisco Weed Management Area intern, is helping us develop the first every comprehensive inventory and management prioritization of invasive plants in the City and County of San Francisco. Brian is currently working for his Master's in Geography at San Francisco State by studying the ecology of the bishop pine forest at Point Reyes National Seashore following the Mount Vision fire of 1995.

Gail Wechsler, our volunteer grants writer/manager fundraiser extraordinaire, has many years experience in the philanthropic world and recently completed a degree in natural resources management from San Francisco State.

Nature in the City Steering Committee

Amber Hasselbring - Artist, Designer
Brent Plater - Environmental Law
Charlotte Hill - Environmental Education
Chris Giorni - Reptile & Amphibian Ecology/Environmental Education
Craig Dawson - Media Specialist/Trail Stewardship
Damien Raffa - Environmental Education and Stewardship
Deirdre Elmansoumi - Butterfly & Environmental Education
Doug Kern - Geophysics/Environmental Education
Dylan Hayes - Sustainable Business/Natural Areas Management
Greg Gaar - History/Photography/Plant Propagation/Habitat Stewardship
Jake Sigg - Plant Ecology/Habitat Stewardship
Josiah Clark - Wildlife Ecology/Habitat Restoration
Laura Castellini - Aquatic Invertebrate Ecology/Environmental Remediation
Lew Stringer - Invasive Plant Ecology/Ecological Restoration
Liam O'Brien - Butterfly and Moth Ecology (Lepidoptery)
Steven Chapman - Environmental Advocacy


Steering Committee members are active in, and in many cases, lead and represent the following organizations, among others:
Art-eco.org
California Native Plant Society
Community Gardens for Butterflies
Habitat Potential
Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council & Native Plant Nursery
Kids in Parks
Media Solutions
Mount Sutro Stewards
Presidio Restoration Advisory Board
Restoresharppark.org
Sierra Club, SF Group
Tree Frog Treks
Urban Watershed Project
Urbia

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Collaboration

Organizations with which we work include also Center for Biological Diversity, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Literacy for Environmental Justice, Neighborhood Parks Council, SF League of Conservation Voters, SF Tomorrow, SF Parks Trust, Sustainable Watershed Alliance, Visitacion Valley Greenway Project, Plant Drum Foundation and Shaping San Francisco.

Nature in the City cultivates collaboration among these and other local ecological and environmental organizations, agencies, and our WED 2005 symposium committee members around high priority local nature advocacy issues, educational and stewardship projects, and restoring habitats and biodiversity throughout the city.

Collaboration is critical to executing successful natural resource management, environmental advocacy and ecological stewardship.

Ongoing collaborative projects include:

Future collaborative efforts, pending funding, will include:

Past Nature in the City collaborations included, in particular:

Nature in the City is an active member of the following collaborations:

In K-12 environmental education, some wonderful collaborations are also happening.

SEEC-SF emerged out of the 2004 San Francisco Ecological Restoration Conference, and contains broad-based membership among the local ecological education community, offering "integrated, accessible, place-based education programs that inspire San Francisco's diverse school community to explore, appreciate, and care for nature in the City."

The San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance promotes community driven processes that create healthy and sustainable learning environments in the city's schools. They "envision a future in which each school operates in concert with its neighborhood and local ecology to foster academic achievement, environmental stewardship, creativity, and community building."

The most mature urban ecological conservation collaboration in North America is Chicago Wilderness, a nature reserve consortium with over 190 member organizations collaborating for the protection and restoration of the natural environment of the Chicago Region. Nature in the City hopes to foster the development of San Francisco's analogue to Chicago Wilderness. Ultimately, we want to create capacity and sustainability for setting scientifically- and collaboratively-based priorities for ecological protection and watershed restoration. Through bridging jurisdictions and communities and creating a unification of purpose, we will be successful with ecological restoration of nature in the city.

Members of the Chicago Wilderness Consortium.

Members of the Nature Network of NY, NJ, & CT .

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