Meet Heather Cole, Puget Sound Community Relations Manager

I am the Puget Sound Community Relations Manager. My work focuses on working with floodplain communities on reaching beyond silos and finding holistic and integrated solutions to healthy river systems.  At the heart of my work is a collaborative approach and using participatory techniques to create community driven solutions.  Some of my favorite projects includes Photovoice for Agricultural Resilience, being the co-lead for the Floodplains by Design Culture and Capacity Action Group and leading the development of a Community of Practice for the Indigenous Landscapes and Communities Strategy. 

I completed my Master’s Degree in International Development and Environmental Analysis at Monash University in Australia. There I focused on how to effectively mobilize communities to tackle our most pressing environmental issues. As a Washington native, I have been fortunate to be able to put those skills into practice here. I have worked in the natural resource and community building space for over 15 years.

I am grateful for all the gifts that nature has to offer and you many find me meandering in the mountains amongst the huckleberries.  I also enjoy practicing yoga and being a lifelong student of Chinese and energic medicine. 

Introducing Emily Howe

Written by Tammy Kennon
Photographed by Hannah Letinich, Volunteer Photo Editor

Emily Howe remembers a time when there were so many salmon, “they would bump your ankles. You could pet them!”

Emily, the Washington Nature Conservancy’s newest staff member, saw those fin-to-fin salmon as a child while camping with her family at Lake Wenatchee on the east side of the Cascades. But over the years as her family returned to the same stream, she watched those salmon dwindle, a firsthand observation of how humans impact the environment that launched a career.

After completing a biology degree at Vermont’s Middlebury College, she continued her education at the University of Washington, Seattle, earning an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Aquatic and Fishery Science.

To add real life experience to her education, Emily studied abroad in the San Blas Islands, off the Caribbean coast of Panama, and in Tanzania, an opportunity to “further how we think about land and people.”

“You can’t leave the people out; you have to integrate them,” Emily says. “We’re trying to figure out how to transform our daily lives to include nature, to offer natural solutions. We don’t have to have a negative impact. It can positive.”

In her new role as Aquatic Ecologist, Emily has come full circle. She will focus on salmon recovery, measuring the success of Nature Conservancy land and freshwater restoration efforts.

“We’re trying to get back to a system that works and functions more naturally,” Emily says. “Sometimes that’s building something that works like nature does.”

The Nature Conservancy efforts include rebuilding logjams to restore ecological processes in streams and bringing clear cut slopes back to their critical and natural place in the ecosystem.

Emily lives in Seattle with her husband and two children, 2 and 5 years old. They go camping, hiking, biking, clam digging, and other outdoor pursuits, “trying to get as dirty as we can.”

Find your career in nature, today.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WORK PROTECTING SALMON

TO LEARN MORE ON THE SCIENCE OF LOG JAMS AND SALMON RECOVERY, PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR PUBLICATION IN THIS WEEK’S COOL GREEN SCIENCE! 

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Meet Debra Crespin!

Our fantastic Associate Director of Philanthropy!

Deb was born in the Bronx, but grew up in the suburbs of California. Eventually she escaped to Northern California before moving to Vermont and now Seattle! That’s a lot of traveling, something she loves to do!

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

I’d split my time: a few months on San Juan Island, a few months in rural Vermont, and the rest in Seattle. Then, of course, I’d travel a lot – everywhere else!

What is your favorite part of nature?

I love forests and high mountain landscapes.

Favorite hobby?

Birding

Favorite food?

Anything Mexican

In one simple and plain sentence, what do you do?

I build relationships with donors who have a passion for conservation, connecting them to our work, and working to secure their philanthropic investment.

KIDS + NATURE = ADVENTURE

A mom reflects on greeting the new day with her daughter & the value of the great outdoors.

BY JODIE TOFT, MARINE ECOLOGIST FOR THE NATURE CONSERVANCY IN WASHINGTON

Part of me would’ve loved if my daughter’s first word had been “crepuscular”. Not “twilight”, “dawn”, or “dusk”. “Crepuscular” - that crusty sounding word that, if said, would have confirmed my nerd genes had successfully been passed on to my daughter. But also a sign that perhaps she notices something deeply special about the time of day when, in my eyes, nature is at its finest. 

The push and pull between night and day makes for a good show. The black and white of night cedes to the colors, letting in blues first and then the rest. Birdsong and wind wake the trees. While I appreciate dawn and dusk in the city, it’s when I’m camping that they resonate the most. 

For the past three years, my husband and I have taken our daughter (and now son, too) camping with our friends and their daughter at Mount Rainier. I’m not going to lie. It’s absolutely exhausting. We backpack 2 miles in to our campsite, manage somehow to set up camp, eat something besides trail mix for dinner, and settle into our tents for what few would call a good night’s sleep, if it’s to be called sleep at all. But from these mild tribulations are borne wonderful rewards. The greatest glee from chasing frogs, throwing rocks, climbing over, under, and through anything in sight. Looking for deer, watching birds, huckleberry plucking. It’s all fair game. 

On our trip last year, my daughter woke just before sunrise, as usual. She was already closer to me than my own skin, having burrowed throughout the night. We groggily made our way out of the tent, me wishing that zippers were silent so as not to wake her baby brother. I knew we had at least an hour before the rest of our illustrious crew would emerge from the tents. An hour or so just for us. We walked down from our campsite into a meadow, and found a rock to sit on. After breathing in the air and watching the sky begin to turn colors, she noticed the moon, perched just above the hills surrounding our meadow. We spent the next hour watching the moon, walking back and forth on a trail through the meadow and noticing the world wake up. 

Being outdoors makes me happy. Watching my kids outdoors makes my really happy. I can only assume they’re taking it all in and hopefully becoming richer people for the experiences. I think they are.

At 5:30 the other morning I heard my girl get out of bed, fumble with the door and trundle her way to our room. I expected to hear a mild lament of hunger or cold or fear of the closet. Instead, she whispered in a soft, slightly incredulous voice, “Dad, Mom….look outside…did you see the moon? It’s a sliver. It’s beautiful.”. And she climbed into bed. The word “crepuscular” means nothing to her. But she gets it. I know that. Her first word? “Ball”, just like the moon.