President:

Kim Klementowski

Kim Klementowski is the President for the Southern California Chapter. She is the Orange/Riverside Counties Regional Preserve Manager with the Center for Natural Lands Management, where she manages preserves set aside for threatened and endangered species. Her work focuses on all aspects of conservation lands management, including weed control and habitat enhancement, surveys and population trends, and long-term vegetation monitoring, with emphasis on coastal California gnatcatcher, vernal pools and fairy shrimp, and burrowing owl. After earning her master’s degree in Geography from CSU, Chico, Kim worked in various positions in the Lassen foothills, the Sonoran Desert, and San Clemente Island, before landing back in SoCal where she grew up. When not working, she can be found rock climbing in the desert, snowboarding in the Sierras, or tearing apart her house for another DIY project. She lives in Homeland with her “kids”, Jojin and Dalea.

Contact: president@tws-socal.org

President-Elect:

Caroline Garcia

Caroline Garcia is a wildlife biologist for ECORP Consulting, Inc. She studied at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign where she earned a B.S. in Integrative Biology and minor in Animal Sciences with a pre-veterinary course track. She also studied geographic information systems at San Diego Mesa College. Her experience includes field surveys, biological monitoring, and technical report preparation for terrestrial biological resources in southern California. Her favorite part of her job is assisting with special-status species surveys for coastal California gnatcatcher, light-footed Ridgway’s rail, desert tortoise, Quino checkerspot butterfly, and small mammals such as Mohave ground squirrel, San Bernardino kangaroo rat, Los Angeles pocket mouse, and Palm Springs pocket mouse and leading surveys for burrowing owl, least Bell’s vireo, western snowy plover, and California least tern. She currently also serves as one of the social media communications committee chairs sharing Chapter happenings and news on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Her love of wildlife comes from her original career path in veterinary medicine – an itch she still scratches by volunteering with wildlife rehabilitation organizations. Caroline has been involved with the Southern California Chapter for 5+ years. She resides in San Diego with her husband and two cats.

Contact: presidentelect@tws-socal.org

Past-President:

Brock Ortega

Brock Ortega previously served as Treasurer, Member-at-Large, and President for the Chapter. He attended Humboldt State University where he obtained a B.S. degree in wildlife management. He is a senior wildlife biologist and principal at Dudek where he has been employed for over 26 years. He holds federal permits for several listed species, and particularly enjoys working on wildlife movement and renewable energy projects. Mr. Ortega has been involved with TWS for 25 years and with the local TWS chapter for the last 12 or so. Mr. Ortega lives in San Diego County and is trying to deal with “empty nest syndrome” as he has three kids in college (2 at University of Missouri, Columbia and one at Northern Arizona University).

Contact: pastpresident@tws-socal.org

Secretary:

Monica Stupaczuk

Monica Stupaczuk is an Environmental Scientist for California State Parks, where she has worked for the past 7 years on biological review, surveys, report writing, permitting, and monitoring for projects all across Southern California, but will be transitioning soon to management of natural resources in parks within the San Diego region. She earned her B.S. in Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology from the University of California, Davis. Previously she has worked on mark-recapture of giant kangaroo rats and San Joaquin antelope squirrels in the Carrizo Plain, pitfall trapping and camera trapping in the Santa Monica Mountains, monitoring breeding piping plovers at Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland, and monitoring breeding California least terns and western snowy plovers at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

Contact: secretary@tws-socal.org

Treasurer:

Brian Parker

Brian Parker serves as the Treasurer for the Southern California Chapter. He has also been the Chapter’s professional development chair since 2016, coordinating the educational and training workshops for the Chapter. He has an undergraduate degree in biology from UC San Diego, a master’s in ecology from UCLA, and an MBA from UC Davis. He has been a biologist in Southern California since 2001, and currently works at Busby Biological Services, Inc. He holds a federal recovery permit to survey for coastal California gnatcatcher and Quino checkerspot butterfly, and also regularly conducts surveys for arroyo toad, burrowing owl, flat-tailed horned lizard, and other plant and animal species. Most of his work focuses on city and county infrastructure projects.

Contact: treasurer@tws-socal.org

Chapter Representative to the Western Section:

Colleen Wisinski

Colleen Wisinski works at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance as a Conservation Program Manager in Recovery Ecology, where she leads the burrowing owl recovery program. Colleen’s main research focus is the ecology and conservation of burrowing owls in Southern California, particularly of the breeding population of burrowing owls in San Diego County. She is responsible for overseeing the field team, managing and analyzing data, and working with partners, including conservation planning and making recommendations about management of the species to local land and wildlife managers. Using direct observations, remote cameras, GPS transmitters, and color banding, she and the team are learning about survival, reproduction, and movement of the owls in the region. The team also uses translocation and conservation breeding to help bolster the burrowing owl population. Colleen earned her bachelor’s degree in Biology and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, and her master’s degree in Fish and Wildlife Management from Montana State University in Bozeman, where she examined survival and habitat use of greater sage-grouse in southwestern Montana. Colleen has also worked as a wildlife rehabilitator where she trained several raptors for educational purposes, and as a whooping crane tracker where she used radio and satellite telemetry to monitor a reintroduced population of cranes. She has been a member of The Wildlife Society since college and has served the Southern California Chapter in multiple capacities since 2015. Colleen loves that she gets to work outdoors and be creative to figure out how to answer research questions in the field. Her love for animals and nature grew from her time spent outdoors in the North Woods of Wisconsin.

Contact: socal@tws-west.org or wsrep@tws-socal.org

Member at Large:

Kiran Stacy

Kiran Stacy is the Member at Large for the Southern California Chapter. She also serves as the Inland Empire County Co-Coordinator (which includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties) and the Conservation Affairs Committee chair for the Chapter. In the past she has worked for California State Parks and for the Center for Natural Lands Management where she focused mostly on control of invasive flora and fauna as well as surveys and habitat management for various sensitive birds and plant species. Today she works as a biologist and assistant project manager for Mountainview Biological Consulting – mostly working from home writing environmental reports and performing biological desktop analysis while caring for her young daughter – but when she does get into the field she especially loves performing nesting bird and California gnatcatcher surveys! When not working, Kiran can usually be found practicing yoga, working on her small garden, playing Dungeon & Dragons with her friends, or doing medieval reenactment with the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Contact: memberatlarge@tws-socal.org

Appointed Positions

Conservation Affairs Committee: Kiran Stacy

Professional Development Committee: Brock Ortega & Brian Parker

Membership and Newsletter Committee: Wendy Loeffler

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee: Anna Cassady

San Diego County Coordinators – Susanne Marczak & Olivia Koziel

LA/Ventura County Coordinator – Brigit Harvey-Ayers

Orange County Coordinator – Barry Nerhus

Riverside/San Bernardino (Inland Empire) County Coordinators – Rheanna Neidinger & Kiran Stacy

Imperial County Coordinator – Rachel Noriega

Social Media Outreach – Caroline Garcia & Destiny Saucedo