Staff

John Vollmar

B.S. University of California, Berkeley: Natural History and Evolution, 1990

Mr. Vollmar, founder and president of Vollmar Consulting, is a senior botanist and wetland ecologist with over 15 years of professional experience. In recent years, Mr. Vollmar's work has focused on regional conservation planning, habitat restoration, and strategic mitigation planning projects involving large-scale, multidisciplinary biological studies, landscape-level habitat analyses, expert scientific review, and public outreach. In 2001-2003, Mr. Vollmar served as project director for a major ecological study of eastern Merced County. This study involved field surveys on more than 45,000 acres for 40+ rare plant and wildlife species, development of a multi-layered GIS database, data analyses to correlated species distributions with landscape features, and development of regional conservation planning and land management approaches. Study results are being used by Merced County and expert scientists to develop a regional conservation plan (HCP/NCCP) incorporating more than 300,000 acres of rangelands and farmland.

Mr. Vollmar is currently directing largescale resource survey and conservation planning studies in Sonoma, Solano, Tehama, and Kern Counties. In the field of land conservation, Mr. Vollmar has worked with numerous ranchers and other landowners to establish conservation easements, obtain easement funding, and develop and implement plans for the long-term monitoring and management of natural resources on easement lands. He has prepared numerous easement documentation reports for the Wildlife Conservation Board, The Nature Conservancy, and other entities.

John S. Hale

M.S. California State University, Chico: Botany, 1997
B.S. California State University, San Francisco: Botany, 1974

Mr. Hale is a botanist and wetland ecologist with more than 15 years of professional experience. He is an expert on California's flora and plant communities with particular knowledge of northern California's botanical resources. He has conducted numerous surveys and studies throughout the region including several linear corridor and site survey projects in Lassen and Siskiyou Counties.

Mr. Hale's expertise includes special-status plant surveys, floristic inventories, noxious weed surveys, vegetation mapping, wetland delineations, and vegetation/biological monitoring. Through his project work, Mr. Hale has discovered numerous rare plant occurrences including several significant range extensions.

Rebecca Wayman

M.S. University of California, Davis: Ecology, 2005
B.S. University of California, Berkeley: Conservation and Resource Studies, Minor in Forestry, 1999

Ms. Wayman has five years of professional experience in botanical surveys and management and scientific research, specializing in botany, vegetation ecology, forest ecology, and fire ecology. She is the director of Vollmar Consulting's Nevada City office in the Sierra Nevada Foothills.

With a background largely in the Sierra Nevada, Ms. Wayman has conducted rare plant and invasive species surveys and plant community research in foothill and mountain ecosystems. She has conducted numerous biological resource surveys in annual grassland, foothill oak woodland, and montane coniferous forest communities, including special habitats such as serpentine and volcanic table areas. For three years she served as the lead botanical researcher for the Teakettle Ecosystem Experiment, a multi-disciplinary ecological study in the southern Sierra Nevada. She conducted research on the effects of forest management practices on understory plant biodiversity and species composition, and is the lead author of the paper, "Initial response of a mixed-conifer understory community to burning and thinning restoration treatments," currently in review for publication. She has written Biological Assessments for the Stanislaus National Forest, which included management recommendations for sensitive and invasive plant species. She also directed botanical survey efforts for a 4000 acre post-wildfire reforestation project over two field seasons. Ms. Wayman created a GIS database of rare and invasive plant species occurrences for the Groveland Ranger District of the Stanislaus National Forest.

Ms. Wayman has completed a course on branchiopods of CA, OR and WA, and assists federally certified personnel with dip-net surveys for large branchiopods in vernal pools of central California. She has experience delineating wetlands and writing accompanying reports. Ms. Wayman has also assisted California Native Plant Society personnel in conducting Rapid Assessments of vegetation types in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Gretchen Vos

M.Ag. Oregon State University: Agroforestry, minors in Botany and Soils, 1993 B.A. University of California, Los Angeles: Linguistics, 1983
With regards to wildlife, Ms. Vos is skilled in radiotelemetry and has conducted many wildlife surveys, including goshawk home range, nesting and plucking post surveys and spotted owl reproductive, banding, and presence/absence surveys. She used radio telemetry in an EPA-funded study researching the presence of an organophosphate Diazinon in bird species including quail.

Ms. Vos is a botanist with more than 10 years professional experience. In addition to her expertise in botany, she has a strong background in soil science, biogeography, and geomorphology. She applies this knowledge in the search for rare plants and community types, stratifying the landscape by a matrix of overlaid emergent features to capture the full range of biodiversity present on-site.

Ms. Vos has several years of experience as an independent botanist conducting botanical surveys of rare, survey and managed species for the Forest Service and BLM in the Klamath/Siskiyou Mountains of Northern California and Southern Oregon. As part of a multi-agency Watershed Analysis team, Ms. Vos wrote vegetation and soils sections of the Dungeness River Watershed Analysis. More recently, she worked south of San Francisco in coastal chaparral communities, where she established permanent monitoring plots for the study of vegetation dynamics, invasion processes, and ground-truthing. Ms. Vos conducted restoration monitoring of Atriplex-dominated communities in the Central Valley and conducted rare plant surveys within grassland and oak woodland communities on Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains of Southern California. She is currently managing several botanical survey and research projects for Vollmar Consulting including a regional study in eastern Solano County, California assessing the effects of regional geomorphology on the distribution of several federally-listed plant species

Jake Schweitzer

B.A. University of California, Berkeley: Geography (concentration in physical geography and geographic information science), 1995

Mr. Schweitzer is a highly skilled Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist and cartographer, with 5 years of experience in the ecological sciences and over 9 years in geographic information sciences.

His bachelors work focused on wetland ecology and geographic information systems. In addition to experience in field ecology, Mr. Schweitzer has nine years of professional experience using ArcInfo, ArcIMS, ENVI, and related geo-spatial software and programming languages. He is proficient in and has provided training in the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology for the collection and mapping of field data for analytical and cartographic purposes.

His ecological and geo-spatial science skills have been applied to a wide array of small and large projects, from the design of monitoring approaches to Sudden Oak Death Syndrome (for U.C. Berkeley), to comprehensive mapping of existing and planned wetland restoration projects in the Bay Area (for CALFED), to the survey and design of potential restoration vernal pools in the Central Valley (for Caltrans). He has prepared GIS maps and databases for numerous wetland mitigation and restoration projects as well as sensitive species conservation and management projects in the San Francisco Bay, Delta, and Central Valley regions. He is experienced in the development and layout of visually-effective large-scale maps used for public presentations and meetings.

Cassie Pinnell

B.A. Mills College: Environmental Studies and Biology, 2004

Ms. Pinnell is a botanist/wetland ecologist with more than three years of professional experience focused on California wetland habitats. Since earning her B.A., she has taken additional courses in wetlands restoration, watershed assessment and large branchiopod identification.

Ms. Pinnell has worked throughout California within seasonal and perennial wetlands, riparian habitats, and coastal marshes. Her most recent work has included a multi-year study assessing the impacts of grazing and phytomass removal on rare and sensitive plant species in Sonoma County vernal pools, and a study assessing the relationship between soil characteristics, inundation and coastal salt marsh vegetation in the Bay Area. She has also conducted numerous rare plant, sensitive species and invasive weed surveys throughout California coastal, grassland, desert and montane bioregions.

Koa Lavery

B.A. California State University, Humboldt: Geography, 2003

Mr. Lavery is skilled in geographic information sciences, cartography, and water resources. His Bachelor's work focused on physical geography and geographic information systems. Since his Bachelor's, Mr. Lavery has completed additional courses in invasive weed control, water quality sampling and analysis, botany and wetlands restoration.

Mr. Lavery has over three years professional experience using ArcInfo, ENVI, Pathfinder, ArcIMS, and related geo-spatial software and programming languages. His work has also included remote sensing and database management.

Mr. Lavery has worked with both tidal (Hayward Shoreline) and artificial freshwater (Arcata) marshes managed for habitat, recreation, and sewage treatment. Mr. Lavery also has experience conducting water quality monitoring (using EPA standards) and invasive plant removal in Las Virgenes Creek (tributary of Malibu Lagoon/Surfrider Beach). He also conducts biological surveys, habitat assessments and wetlands delineations across California. Mr. Lavery is currently involved in producing management plans for California Dept. of Fish and Game's Honey Lake game preserve in Lassen County and Horseshoe Ranch game preserve in Siskiyou County, and the production of natural resources map with the Sierra Club for Santa Clarita County.

Josh Phillips

M.E.M. University of California, Santa Barbara: Environmental Science and Management, 1999 B.S. University of California, Davis: Environmental Biology, 1995

Mr. Phillips has seven years of professional experience as a wildlife biologist and ecologist. He has a comprehensive understanding of the environmental planning process, including expertise in sensitive biological resources and the state and federal regulations protecting these resources (e.g., CEQA, the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, the federal Clean Water Act, and the California Fish and Game Code).

Mr. Phillips has extensive experience analyzing the effects of development projects on biological resources and has prepared numerous biological resource chapters of EIRs, Biological Assessments for Section 7 consultations, and Biological Constraints Evaluations. Mr. Phillips also has conducted special-status species surveys, habitat evaluations, wetland delineations, vegetation mapping, mitigation design and implementation, and coordinating with state and federal resource agencies. He holds a section 10(a)(1)(A) recovery permit to conduct surveys for federally-listed vernal pool branchiopods (i.e., fairy and tadpole shrimp) and has conducted numerous surveys for these species. He has also organized and conducted surveys for special-status plants, California red-legged frog, California tiger salamander, western pond turtle, western burrowing owl, nesting birds, Chinook salmon, and steelhead.

Mr. Phillips has managed and participated in large-scale projects involving complex biological issues throughout northern and southern California. He has worked on projects for a variety of public and private sector clients, including the cities of Hercules, Richmond, Pinole, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, Watsonville, and Calistoga, as well as Caltrans, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Department of Public Works, Del Webb, Verizon, Newhall Ranch, and Tejon Ranch.

Wendy Renz

PhD University of California, Berkeley: Aquatic Ecology, Expected 2009 B.A. University of California, Berkeley: Molecular and Cell Biology, 2001 A.S. City College of San Francisco: Chemistry, 1999

Ms. Renz has an unusual range of experience from biological monitoring and recreational use studies to water quality sampling and laboratory analysis. Ms. Renz is currently participating in a project assessing the effects of human activity (clamming) on seal populations in Bolinas Lagoon and Tomales Bay, California. In another study, she independently researched and developed a new snowshoe program that was successfully implemented by CALAdventures in Berkeley, California. This study included risk analysis and a risk management plan. While working for the EPA, she conducted laboratory analyses of raw and potable water samples by EPA certified methods. She was the primary analyst for several wet-chem methods (alkalinity, ammonia, turbidity, etc.), and set-up and optimized a brand new RAPID PCR instrument and method for detection of pathogens in water.

Previously, she worked in biotech labs for over five years, gaining valuable skills in data analysis, instrument calibration and validation, technical writing, and project management. Ms. Renz recently joined Vollmar Consulting. She is currently using her chemistry and data analysis skills on a project whose aim is to restore tidal marsh habitat using San Francisco Bay dredge sediments. She is also managing the water quality sampling aspect of several vernal pool and seasonal wetland conservation and creation projects to better understand the balance of water quality and nutrients in preserved versus created wetlands.