Featured Scientist

Anna Burkholder is a senior environmental scientist with the Preparedness Branch of CDFW’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) in Sacramento. She is the statewide Inland Geographic Response Plan Coordinator, working with fellow OSPR staff throughout the state to develop inland response plans for waterways at high risk for an oil spill. She has worked for CDFW for 20 years, most recently joining OSPR in 2016. In addition to her role as response plan coordinator, she is training for two oil spill emergency response positions: wildlife branch director (the position that oversees wildlife response efforts during a spill) and liaison officer (which works to address stakeholders’ concerns during a spill).

Anna earned her Bachelor of Science degree in biology, with an emphasis in zoology, from San Francisco State University. She prefers being outdoors, hiking with her dogs, snowshoeing, paddle boarding and horseback riding. She volunteers with the DOVES Guidance Program, a therapeutic horseback riding program for at-risk kids, as well as for NorCal German Shorthaired Pointer Rescue. She is improving her skills at upland bird hunting, including pheasant and turkey, and is still waiting to take a shot at her first tom.

Who or what inspired you to become a scientist?

When the movie Jaws came out, I was both terrified and fascinated. To this day, it is my favorite movie and I am more thrilled than ever with sharks. I briefly met Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws, several years back at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and that was exciting. He was promoting a new book trying to dispel the terrifying image of Great Whites, which he felt partially responsible for creating. I was also inspired by Dr. John McCosker, a Great White Shark expert that works for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. McCosker had begun investigating why shark attacks occur, assessing their danger to humans in the grand scheme of things. He has worked to help understand the importance of sharks in the ecosystem and how they relate to the health of our oceans.

What got you interested in working with wildlife?

Clearly I would have loved to study sharks but didn’t follow that path. Along the way though, some of my classes at San Francisco State got me interested in some aspects of wildlife. Studying the behavior of snow leopards at the San Francisco Zoo (they sleep a lot!) for my Animal Behavior class, and doing some mark and recapture studies of mice and voles in Pacifica for an Ecology class, were fun experiences.

Who or what brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

Pure luck brought me to CDFW. After I graduated from college, I was working for a biotech company in Hercules and wasn’t terribly happy with the work. I used to go for walks during my break time and look out over San Pablo Bay and think to myself, “I need a job out there.” While taking an oceanography class at night at a junior college, I was looking at the job board one evening and saw a posting for a temporary scientific aid position with CDFW, working on the Bay Study Project. I got the job and lo and behold, there I was out on a boat every month, sampling fish throughout the Delta and San Francisco Bay (including San Pablo Bay!). I have never looked back.

Twenty years later, I guess it was a good move for me. I stay because I love this department, mostly the people I work with, and the dedication and passion we all have for the environment and the strong desire to protect the species and habitats in the state.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

When I am not traveling to participate in oil spill drills, oil spill workshops or Incident Command System training, I spend time working on the Geographic Response Plan template document that will be used to produce regional plans throughout the state for oil spill response. I coordinate with my OSPR colleagues, as well as other state and federal agencies, oil spill response organizations and industry folks on the development of these documents so they can provide a useful tool in responding to an incident. It’s been great to meet and work with an entirely new set of folks that I haven’t come across in my career until now, and to have a common goal of preparing for oil spills and working to protect the public, the environment and economic resources in our state.

What is the most memorable or rewarding project that you’ve worked on for CDFW?

I’ve spent a lot of time in the field working on boats. I worked on the 2007 Pike Eradication project at Lake Davis, and even got to spend a day escorting Delta and Dawn, the wayward humpback whale cow and calf that swam up the deep water channel to the Port of Sacramento in 2007. We escorted them on the last day they were observed inside the Golden Gate as they made their way through San Pablo Bay and finally back out to the Pacific Ocean.

I would have to say the most rewarding project is shaping up to be my new job with OSPR. The office was established 25 years ago and has a very comprehensive marine program in terms of preparedness and response to oil spills, but since OSPR’s jurisdiction expanded to include inland in 2015, I get to be on the forefront of establishing preparedness plans to protect all waters of the state.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I work with an amazing group of folks in every part of our department, and we have a common goal of preserving and enhancing the natural environment. Being able to feel proud of the department you work for and cheering on the achievements of others in your field is a great feeling. Not to mention some of the great days in the field, which include flying along the California coast to record data on nesting seabirds, looking for nesting grebes in high mountain lakes and touring the state’s bird and marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation facilities.

Is there a preconception about scientists you would like to dispel?

The term “environmental scientist” encompasses a wide range of job duties within the State of California, including field biologists and environmental planning and permitting staff. We certainly have state scientists who conduct important laboratory research, including folks who work for OSPR and conduct water analysis and DNA fingerprinting on oil products. And what’s wrong with a periodic table? I loved general chemistry class!

Do you have advice for people considering careers in science or natural resources?

If it is what you love to do, then don’t shy away from following that path. You can try different aspects of working in the natural resources field and then focus on what you enjoy the most. I would volunteer or take shorter-term assignments to work with multiple organizations and get experience in different areas. Meet experts in their field and get a foot in the door through internships or part-time jobs. There are so many exciting directions you can go in this field.

Dave Lancaster is an environmental scientist covering Humboldt and Del Norte counties for the Northern Region’s Wildlife Management Program. He has been a unit wildlife biologist for the past 13 years, covering a variety of issues involving birds and mammals including hunting program management, human-wildlife conflict, wildlife disease and welfare, habitat restoration, special-status species protection, population monitoring, research and providing technical assistance to other CDFW programs, agencies and the public.

Dave grew up in eastern Oregon and graduated from Oregon State University, earning Bachelor of Science degrees in both Wildlife Science and Fisheries Science. He has worked as a biologist for more than 20 years, the last 17 of which have been with CDFW.

What led you into a career as a wildlife biologist?

Hunting is a part of life out in rural eastern Oregon, and you start young. This early introduction to game quickly grew into a much wider appreciation for the land and wildlife in general. While there are a number of different jobs that allow a person to satisfy their desire to work out on the land, being a wildlife biologist provides an opportunity to work for the benefit of wildlife and the people who appreciate it.

It is interesting that you have degrees in both Wildlife Science and Fisheries Science. How did that come about?

I wanted to have a career in wildlife management, but most of the work was in fisheries, so I was hedging my bets.

What brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

Early in one’s career as a biologist, it is often necessary to be flexible and willing to go where job opportunities take you. Like many people in other states, my image of California was crowded freeways and urban sprawl. I never imagined I would make a career here, but when a job came up, I took it, figuring I would not be here long. It was a nice discovery for me that California still has a wealth of wildlife and wildlands, and diverse opportunity to work toward making a material contribution to conservation.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

Unit wildlife biologists have such a wide variety of duties that we typically work on several distinctly different issues in a day, and frequently have our plans changed by new developments occurring in any one of the many tasks we cover. I may on a given morning start to design a study, do a survey or prepare a management plan. Then the phone rings and I am being told a bear broke into a chicken coop, a deer is tangled up in barbed wire or a group of birds has been found dead on the beach – and the day just changed.

What is the most rewarding project that you’ve worked on for CDFW?

There are so many rewarding moments in a biologist’s career, it is difficult to pick out one particular thing. There are those projects that are not enjoyable to work on in the moment, but are very rewarding in the end because of the benefit to wildlife they produce. For example, developing habitat improvement projects and mitigation for impacts from development projects involve a lot of time at the desk, in meetings and conferring with folks with differing opinions and goals. Then there are the days when you are out in woods, grasslands or marshes doing surveys or tagging wildlife. You also get personal satisfaction and thanks from the public for helping a particular animal in some form of distress, such as when a deer or an elk is tangled up in barbed wire and you are able to free it up and send it on its way. On other days, you get the opportunity to help a person who is having some type of problem with wildlife. Of course, for wildlife biologists, any day improving the outlook for wildlife constitutes a good day, but if doing so happens to involve watching, handling or tracking animals, then all the better.

What is your favorite species to interact with or study?

The groups of species that I interact with most frequently are game birds and mammals, typically through managing hunting programs, helping landowners who are having conflicts with wildlife and responding to disease outbreaks. I do not have one particular favorite species. It is a diverse and fascinating world out there, with each one having its own appeal.

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to do?

Figuring out how to restore and maintain native grassland habitats while accommodating commercial livestock ranching in the shrub steppe of the Great Basin and in coastal montane prairies would be high on the list in terms of landscape-scale conservation priorities. These areas provide important wildlife habitat but the livestock industry is important as well to these rural communities. Providing for both is the key to success in the big picture.

What is it about the work you do that you would most like us to know?

Unit wildlife biologists, as with staff from most of CDFW’s programs, work every day to find practical, effective solutions to complex problems, and try when doing so to satisfy a diverse range of constituents. We have to be practical because the decisions we make and the work we do often directly affects both our constituency and conservation actions carried out on the ground. We have to come up with solutions that actually work, not just in theory; they must work for wildlife, be compatible with landowners’ desired use of their property and be implemented in a cost effective manner. Take hunting as an example: you need to provide for the ecological integrity of the wildlife population being hunted and the habitats and other species that interact with it, and provide for use by the public both in the form of hunting and viewing opportunity, and use hunting as a tool to minimize property damage the hunted species may be causing on private property.

Any advice for people considering careers in science or natural resources?

Get out in the field and read all the quality scientific literature you have time for. The university and on-the-job training are key components to building knowledge and competency, but a lifelong habit of self-education is indispensable. A broad familiarity with the collective knowledge compiled by those that came before us, tempered with extensive and considered first-hand observations from the field, are what make a good biologist.