Meet the SERNW Board

Allison Warner, President

Currently with the Jay Group, Inc., a landscape architect and environmental consulting firm in Marysville, Allison works as a wetland ecologist, delineating and classifying wetlands, streams and developing mitigation plans and critical area reports. Allison has been involved in restoration in the Pacific Northwest since 1992, upon graduating from the UC Berkeley College of Forestry and Natural Resources. She has a Master’s of Science in forest ecology, and a bachelor’s degree in soil science, also from UC Berkeley. She worked for six years as a soil scientist and watershed specialist for the US Forest Service in Skykomish, Washington, and has over fourteen years professional experience in natural resources and native plants of the Pacific Northwest. She worked with the MBS Forest native plant team to develop seed contracts and forest policy for use of native plants. She has worked extensively in wetland delineation and stream surveys; watershed restoration and analysis, revegetation and propagation; and fish habitat improvement projects.

Her experience includes all phases of project development from project design to implementation and contract supervision. She has performed engineering road surveys and worked with heavy equipment contractors on road decommissioning projects, inspected culvert, bridge projects for erosion compliance, and designed and managed stream restoration and revegetation contracts. Allison has extensive training in fish-habitat evaluation and requirements, hydric soils, and wetland delineation, and native plants. Through six years of experience working at Snohomish County Planning and Community Development, Allison developed an in-depth knowledge of federal, state and local jurisdictional requirements and processes. She has recently completed the Construction Site Erosion and Pollution Control course offered by the University of Washington Engineering Dept. Allison served as the SERNW board Secretary in 2009-2011. Contact Allison.

Marnie Criley, Executive Vice President

Marnie Criley is the Director of Restore Montana, a collaborative organization that works to promote and strengthen an integrated restoration economy that addresses the natural and built environments. Marnie was first introduced to the concepts of forest and watershed restoration in 1996 and she has been engaged in on-the-ground restoration projects in the Intermountain West ever since, working part-time for Watershed Consulting, LLC. Before starting Restore Montana, Marnie worked for a Missoula-based conservation group, Wildlands CPR, for nine years. During that time she developed Wildlands CPR's restoration program which focuses on road reclamation. Marnie's passion was in promoting the socio-economic benefits of road removal and getting road removal included as a key component of forest restoration projects. Marnie has been engaged in numerous restoration-focused collaboratives at a national, regional and local scale, and these efforts have led to her interest in the relationship between ecological restoration and human communities. Her current focus is on creating high-skill, high-wage restoration jobs and furthering public understanding of the importance of restoration. Marnie is a member of the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition, she is on the Steering Committee of the Montana Forest Restoration Committee and she chairs the Lolo Restoration Committee, a collaborative effort to promote restoration projects on the Lolo National Forest in western Montana. Marnie has an M.S. degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. She served as an At-Large Director for SERNW in 2010-2011. Contact Marnie.

Joshua Jensen, Program Vice President

Joshua Jensen is an environmental planner at Anchor QEA where he has worked on a breadth of restoration and cleanup projects located primarily in the aquatic environment. As a planner, he has helped develop a variety of local, state, and federal permitting applications and discipline reports in addition to extensive field work including wetland and stream delineations, biological monitoring, and geotechnical investigations. Mr. Jensen received a joint undergraduate degree in Economics and Environmental Studies at Western Washington University in 2007 and subsequently received a certificate in Environmental Law and Regulation at the University of Washington in 2010. Mr. Jensen is an advocate for restoring degraded habitats in the Puget Sound and beyond and is looking forward to connecting with like-minded colleagues who share the same interest. Contact Joshua.

Frank Reckendorf, Treasurer

Frank Reckendorf is a fluvial geomorphologist with Reckendorf and Associates in Salem, Oregon. Frank believes that SERNW provides an excellent eclectic forum for people to get information about restoration. He attended three SERNW conferences as a participant and presenter before becoming a board member and thoroughly enjoyed the enthusiasm and enlightenment of the participants concerning environmental issues. At the 2005 SERNW meeting, he talked to a board member about my willingness to give back to the organization some volunteer help, since he had received much from the three conferences he attended. Volunteer organization cannot continue to function without a strong commitment from a large number of volunteers, and Frank has made such a commitment. During his first term on the board, he attended and participated in every board meeting even though all but one meeting required overnight travel. He volunteered to do an all day workshop for the 2006 joint conference with SWSNW, and otherwise helped out at the conference for three days. He served on the Plenary and Technical Session Committees for the 2007 annual meeting, and as a session chair and a presenter

Frank is willing to continue to help SERNW for another term, because of what SERNW has been doing in the past and needs to continue. SERNW promotes the diversity of all plant and animal life and establishment of healthy ecological relationships. He wants to be part of that effort. His focus has been and will continue to be providing a forum for low cost meetings and training for members of the ecological community. Contact Frank.

Betsy Bermingham, Secretary

Betsy Bermingham is a landscape architect and natural resources specialist with Anchor QEA. She has been involved in design development, alternatives analysis, cost estimating and construction management of a number of restoration and remediation projects in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. Betsy received her M.L.A. from the University of Washington in 2007 and her M.S. in Natural Resource & the Environment from the University of Michigan in 2005. Prior to her graduate degrees, she worked on landscape ecology projects as a GIS analyst at The Wilderness Society’s Center for Landscape Analysis lab.

At Anchor QEA Betsy has enjoyed working on a number of marine and estuarine projects that restore bluff-to-beach nutrient and sediment connections through the removal of shoreline armoring combined with native plantings. In these dynamic systems, she particularly enjoys the challenge of integrating restoration goals with existing recreation uses. Recently, Betsy has had the opportunity to learn more about scrub-steppe ecosystems through her work as a remediation cost estimator for the Hanford site in central Washington.

Betsy is impressed with SERNW’s holistic focus and commitment to the advancement of restoration science. Her particular interest in volunteering with the board is to help facilitate greater dialogue between restoration practitioners and scientists and the general public. Contact Betsy.

James G. Hallett, Publications and SERI Regional Representative

Jim Hallett is a research ecologist and Adjunct Professor in the Biology Department at Eastern Washington University. Over the last 20 years, Jim has been a principal on several projects that directly bear on land management issues in the Pacific Northwest. His earlier work in the region examined the effects of forest management on terrestrial vertebrate communities. These projects included examination of riparian buffers, corridor use, landscape composition and context, and the importance of particular habitat elements. More recently, Jim’s research has focused on approaches for evaluating effectiveness of habitat restoration activities. Since 2001, he and colleagues have been developing a monitoring and evaluation program to assess the responses of vegetation and terrestrial wildlife to ecological restoration. This work started with the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in northeastern Washington and adjacent Idaho, but has now expanded into a regional monitoring program for the five Tribes forming the Upper Columbia United Tribes, covering a diversity of habitats over a very broad geographical area. Jim has focused a lot of his attention on application of analytical tools for determining restoration success given limited monitoring data, and in developing mechanisms for greater sharing of data and results. His doctoral work was completed at Texas Tech University in 1980 and examined the assembly of small-mammal communities. Jim is now happy to look at their reassembly. He is a member of SER and SERNW, Ecological Society of America, and Society for Conservation Biology. Contact Jim.

Adrien Elseroad, Director at Large Position 1

Adrien Elseroad is a plant ecologist for The Nature Conservancy in Oregon. She provides scientific expertise on vegetation restoration, research, and monitoring in grasslands, wetlands, and dry forests. Much of her professional experience has focused on the planning and implementation of ecological restoration projects. She has developed comprehensive restoration plans for large grasslands preserves in the Columbia Basin and NE Oregon, and evaluated the response of wetland vegetation to changes in hydrologic restoration at a river delta restoration project in the Klamath Basin to develop planting priorities. She has also developed and implemented research and monitoring projects that evaluate the impacts of management activities, such as the effects of grazing and prescribed fire in wet meadows; the effects of different site preparation activities on seeded species establishment in restoration grasslands; and the effectiveness of herbicides in controlling cheatgrass. Current projects include reconstructing pre-fire exclusion stand structure in dry forests to guide restoration prescriptions. Prior to joining the Conservancy in 2002, she received a M.S. in Forestry from the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, and a B.S. in Natural Resources from Cornell University. Adrien has been a member of the Society for Ecological Restoration since attending her first meeting in San Francisco in 1999, has presented at three SER meetings, and published results from her graduate research in Ecological Restoration. Contact Adrien.

Alaine Sommargren, Director at Large Position 2

Alaine Sommargren is the Natural Resource Specialist for the City of Mercer Island, where she designs and manages restoration projects on approximately 300 acres of public park and open space land. In 2008, she co-authored the Pioneer Park Forest Health Plan, a 25-year restoration plan for Mercer Island’s largest natural area, and presented the findings at the SERNW conference in 2010. She began teaching courses in the Restoration Horticulture program at Edmonds Community College in 2008, where she is able to draw from her experiences in research, landscaping and organic farming. Alaine received a M.S. in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington’s School of Forest Resources, and a B.S. from University of California Davis in Environmental Horticulture and Urban Forestry, with a concentration on Biodiversity and Restoration, in 1999. She is also an ISA Certified Arborist and PNW-ISA Tree Risk Assessor.

Alaine is interested in the distinct ecological challenges of restoring public lands within the urbanenvironment, as well as the opportunities for public education and engagement in the restoration process. In the course of her work coordinating extensive replanting projects, she has also become interested in the effects of plant provenance on restoration outcomes, and increasing regional availability of genetically-appropriate plant materials. Alaine is eager to find ways of making the latest research in restoration techniques more accessible to practitioners, and would like to become active in facilitating communication amongst restoration professionals. Contact Alaine.

Barry Southerland, Director at Large Position 3

Barry works at the USDA-West National Technology Support Center on the National Water Quality and Quantity Technology Development Team with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Portland, OR. Barry has served 28 years with various federal agencies in the fields of watershed science, fluvial studies, soils, and range work. Twenty-six of his 28 years of federal career service has been with the NRCS. Previous to 1991 most of his NRCS (SCS) work was at field office positions such as soil conservationist, supervisory soil conservationist, team leader, and hydrologic unit (watershed) project coordinator in the Western United States. Barry completed and received his Ph.D. (NRCS Graduate Studies Program) in fluvial geomorphology at Washington State University in October of 2003. He also has MPA, BS, and AA degrees in natural resource science fields including range, watershed studies, soils minor and pre-forestry studies. He has been a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC #514) for twenty years. His principle expertise is geomorphic river restoration: training, analysis, planning, design, and implementation. He has analyzed, planned, and constructed numerous river restoration designs and recommendations on streams (over 5 miles throughout 13 states), including watershed-based fluvial and streambank erosion studies. Barry is a NRCS National Employee Development Center instructor of stream geomorphology for two courses. He teaches introductory, applications, advanced fluvial geomorphology, and natural channel design. He also is a trainer at universities, professional societies including SER, and state sponsored courses. Author and co-author on related materials such as: Natural Channel Design NEH (National Engineering Handbook) 653, NEH 654, Stream Corridor Restoration: Principle, Processes, and Practices, Stream Notes, Rural Technology Initiatives, Inter-Collegian Library Digital Dissertation- Stream Geomorphology and Classification in Glacial-Fluvial Valleys of the North Cascade Mountain Range in Washington State standards and specifications, and white papers. Barry currently has ongoing monitoring and assessment study sites throughout the Western and Central United States in: natural channel design, streambank erosion pin, profile and bed analysis, wood structures used for streambank stability and aquatic habitat improvement and other river restoration related studies. Barry’s principle interest is to promote a geomorphic natural channel design- interdisciplinary approach to river restoration. He is a SER-NW Chapter co-instructor with Frank Reckendorf. Contact Barry.

Hem Nalini Morzaria Luna, Director at Large Position 4

Dr. Morzaria Luna is a coastal ecologist. She earned a Ph.D. Botany with a minor in Limnology and Marine Science at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Her doctoral research focused on salt marsh restoration in the Tijuana River Estuary, where she explored the mechanisms that drive plant establishment during restoration. She then spent five years working on wetland ecology and conservation at CEDO Intercultural, a non-profit in the Northern Gulf of California Mexico, where she is currently an Associate researcher. Her research focused on understanding the ecology of the hypersaline negative wetlands in the region, from varied approaches including community, food web and historical ecology. She also had the opportunity to prepare justification studies to declare two wetlands as Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance in 2007 and 2008. Since 2009, she has been based in Seattle, working as a contractor at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA in the Integrative Marine Ecology team. Her work there has focused on testing management scenarios using an Atlantis ecosystem model of the Northern Gulf of California. Contact Morzaria.

Ray Entz, Director at Large Position 5

Ray D. Entz is the Director of Wildlife and Terrestrial Resources and Deputy Director for the Kalispel Tribe of Indians’ Natural Resources Department, in Usk, WA. He was hired by the Tribe full time in 1993, where he “learned” how to understand and restore wetland and riparian habitats and their connection to tribal culture. He has been employed with the Tribe for the past 17 years and enjoys the cultural and spiritual connection between natural resources and the people he serves. It is their sharing philosophy and community mindedness that continue to motivate him to restore not only habitats but the human connections to them. He has focused mainly on the protection, restoration and enhancement of wetland, floodplain, and riparian systems of the Pend Oreille River subbasin. He has worked to purchase and restore habitat on nearly 4,200 acres in eastern Washington and northern Idaho since 1992. Ray served as a board member for five years with the Inland Northwest Land Trust. Recently, he has led the Tribe’s Natural Resources Department’s staff through the Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Action Planning (CAP) process in order to better focus resource management and conservation issues for the Tribe. He has been instrumental in the development of a terrestrial restoration monitoring program for the Tribe and its sister tribes through their membership in the Upper Columbia United Tribes and a working partnership with Eastern Washington University. He is currently the chair of the International Mountain Caribou Technical Committee and serves on the ESA Mountain Caribou Recovery Team. Ray received his B.S. in Biology in 1991 and his M.S.in Biology in 1995 from Eastern Washington University. He spent four years in the U.S. Army as a veterinarian technician. He grew up in Moses Lake, Washington where he learned to enjoy the outdoors and his ultimate passion for wetlands and riparian habitats – as that was where the ducks were. Contact Ray.

Keith Nevison, Student Guild Board Member

Keith serves as the Student Garden Liaison for Portland State University, as well as being the Founder and President of the brand new PSU-SER Student Guild. He is very excited to collaborate with his peers at other universities, and will endeavor to forge partnerships that will stand the test of time. Keith hopes to use the skills that he has learned from his extensive work with native plants and invasive species removal to educate others about the benefits of restoration, in selecting appropriate plants for landscapes. He is thrilled to have the opportunity to continue to work with SERin promoting environmental restoration projects that protect and renew the biological diversity of our planet. Contact Keith.