Channel
Islands Chapter Officer Biographies
David L. Magney – President. David has been a member of the Channel Islands Chapter since he first joined CNPS back in the mid-1970s, serving the chapter as its Conservation Committee Chairman since the 1980s. He has been active at the state level too, serving as Director-at-Large in the late 1980s, President from 1991 to 1995, Vice-President for Legislation, Vice-President for Conservation, and currently serves as a Member of the Board of Directors (under the new state organization). He began serving as the chapter president in early 2004, and has been editing the chapter newsletter, Matilija Copy, as interim editor for the past two years (until someone volunteers [please] to take it over).
David is a biologist/botanist and physical geographer with a thorough knowledge of the flora of California. He has over 20 years of field experience in biological studies. He earned a B.A. in Geography and Environmental Studies (emphasis in botany) in 1985 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. David also holds an A.S. degree in Landscape Horticulture and Certificate of Completion in Natural Resources (1975) from Ventura College, Ventura, California. He has taught courses or given presentations on wetland impacts and mitigation, CEQA, Clean Water Act permitting, water quality, and wetland delineation methodology. David Magney has authored two floras in California and presented numerous papers on vegetation and water quality. He is completing the manuscript for the Flora of Ventura County. David was born in British Columbia, Canada and grew up as a child on Hollywood Beach and Silver Strand, Ventura County, settling in Ojai in the 70s.
He has worked on and managed a large variety of projects throughout the Pacific southwest. These projects include: biological resource inventories, vegetation mapping and classification, wetland delineations and restoration, rare plant surveys and ecological studies, fisheries habitat assessment and mitigation design, fisheries monitoring, small mammal trapping and surveys, biological impact analysis and mitigation, and construction and mitigation monitoring. He has managed and worked on a variety of projects, including energy, residential, commercial, flood control, and landfill projects. David has also worked on off-highway vehicles trail siting, mining, electrical, transmission/pipeline, communication corridor, transportation, restoration, and dam developments. He formed his own company, (DMEC) in 1997 after spending 2 years with Fugro West, 6 years with Jones & Stokes Associates, and 3 years with Dames & Moore. He has also taught science and photography at two private schools, and worked for the US Forest Service on the Los Padres National Forest performing rare plant surveys.
Lynne W. Kada – Vice President. Lynne joined
CNPS and the Channel Islands Chapter Board of Directors in the mid-1990s. She has served as the chapter president for
several years from 1999 to 2004, and serves on the state CNPS Board of
Directors and is currently the CNPS Chapter Council Chairperson.
Lynne works part-time periodically as a Senior Planner
with DMEC, specializing in land use planning and impact assessments,
particularly involving CEQA compliance.
She recently (2001) retired from Ventura County Planning Division after
over 22 years there, working on every aspect of environmental review for the
County, including commercial, solid waste, agriculture, mobile home parks, and
oil and gas developments, and LAFCO staff analyst. She also has worked extensively writing (and winning) grant
applications. Lynne served as grant
manager for several large grants received by the County. She has extensive experience making presentations
to city councils and boards of supervisors.
Lynne earned a BS in Chemistry from San Diego State University with minors in mathematics, biology, and physical science and a MA in Environmental Planning from California State University at Northridge. She holds a general secondary life teaching credential from California, teaching chemistry, biology, physics, general math, physical and earth science, and algebra. Lynne is working on completing a certificate for GIS from Ventura College, and has completed training in ESRI’s ArcView software. She is also trained in conflict resolution.
Cher Batchelor – Secretary. Cher joined the Channel Islands Chapter Board
of Directors in early 2004. Ms. Batchelor was
born in Thousand Oaks, California, where she grew up. Cher earned
a B.S. in Ecology
and Systematic Biology (emphasis in Ecology), California Polytechnic State
University, San Luis Obispo (1995).
Cher is a biologist/ecologist with DMEC, specializing
in ecological studies of natural and disturbed ecosystems, gathering floristic
and ecological data, and performing statistical data collection and design for
analysis. She
has eight years of field experience in biological studies and has a working
knowledge of the California flora and fauna. Cher has conducted field
surveys for botanical resources, including special-status species throughout
Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Counties. She also conducted
botanical surveys for CalTrans (on behalf of DMEC) in the Mojave Desert.
She has performed biological surveys, special-status species surveys,
and upland vegetation mapping and classification for the entire Camp Pendleton
Marine Corps Base, the Unocal property on east Sulphur Mountain in Ventura
County, the Ventura River from the mouth to the Matilija Dam (Ventura County),
and the
Bridle Ridge development site in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains
(Santa Barbara County). She has prepared
biological assessments with detailed descriptions of all plant associations
observed, following protocols developed by CNPS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
Cher conducts
CEQA Initial Studies, as an on-call biologist for the Ventura County Planning
Division, performing sensitive biological resource assessments for Ventura
County discretionary projects. She also assisted Caltrans in developing
detailed vegetation inventories to support management plans for 12 preserve
sites scattered across California as a pilot program designed to protect and
manage unique or representative vegetation resources located within Caltrans
right-of-ways.
Cher has
collected salmon habitat inventory data along San Luis Obispo Creek with
Central Coast Salmon Enhancement, Inc.; conducted independent studies of grazing
affects on montane meadow clover species in 30 different Sierra Nevada meadows;
and studied the male mating efforts of the Monarch Butterfly, a special-status
species.
Cher also excels as an event planner, for which
the Channel Islands Chapter has benefited; she did much of the detailed
planning for the chapter’s September 2004 Annual Dinner. She is also
talented as a botanical illustrator.
Ken Niessen – Plant Sciences/Vegetation Chairman. Ken joined the chapter board in 2003 with interests in natural vegetation and invasive exotics. He is a botanist specializing in vegetation mapping/inventorying and California floristics. Ken has lead several hikes for the chapter.
Ken is a PhD candidate in Biology at UCLA with his dissertation on “Patterns of asexual reproduction in Mexican Sonoran Desert cholla cacti (Cylindropuntia)”. He earned a M.A. in Botany for UC at Berkeley and a B.S. in Biology from UCLA.
He has conducted floristic field surveys in the Mojave Desert (Fort Irwin), rare plant surveys through the Mojave Desert associated with the Wy-Cal gas pipeline, and vegetation surveys and mapping in southern California, including in the Los Angeles basin, Ventura County, and Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara Islands. Ken has also worked as a naturalist in the Peruvian Amazon, and as a Teaching Fellow and Assistant at UCLA and UC Berkeley, and as a Horticulturalist at the UCLA Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden. He has authored or coauthored three botanical papers.
Ken lives in Meiners Oaks, Ojai Valley, with his wife and daughter. He works hard at eradicating invasive exotics from natural areas, including on the Channel Islands and in the Los Padres National Forest. Ken works part-time at DMEC, and volunteers for the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy and Los Padres National Forest.
Liz Chattin – Treasurer.
Liz is a wildlife biologist specializing in amphibians, with much
work and experience in Florida, the Great Smokey Mountains, and southern
California. She has served as the
chapter treasurer since late 2003.
Patt McDaniel – Director-At-Large. Patt has served many positions on the
chapter board, including vice-president, Horticulture Committee Chair, and is
currently serving on the chapter board as a Member-At-Large. She has also spent many years on the State
CNPS Board of Directors. Patt is a
special insurance broker, owning and operating McDaniel Insurance Services in
Ojai.
Rita DePuydt – Membership Chair. Rita has long served as the Channel Islands Chapter’s membership chairperson, ensuring that our chapter membership database and mailing list is current. She has also been vital in the coordination and organization of past chapter annual dinners, which were very well received by all who attended. Rita earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences/Plant Ecology from Michigan Technological University and has published numerous articles and reports.
Rita is botanist/compliance monitor and writer with 10 years field experience. She has conducted field surveys for rare plants in the Mojave Desert for a number of rare plants, including: Astragalus jaegerianus, Enceliopsis covillei, Lupinus magnificus, Sphaeralcea rusbyii ssp. eremioda, Nitriphila mohavensis, Centaurium namophilum, and Cordylanthus tecopensis. Rita has also conducted rare plant surveys for Eriophyllum lanatum var. hallii, and Sidalcea hickmanii ssp. parishii in the Los Padres National Forest. She has mapped the natural vegetation of Camp Pendleton and worked as a mitigation compliance monitor on a number of projects while employed by DMEC.
Rita currently works as a bookkeeper for a local international nonprofit organization. She is an excellent cook, and has published two cookbooks focused on the use of Stevia (it is a plant) as natural a sugar substitute. Rita lives and works in Ojai.
Rick Burgess - Ventura County Rare Plant Coordinator. Rick is currently serving as the Channel Islands Chapter Rare Plant Coordinator (Ventura County) and Plant Watch Coordinator. He has held a number of offices/positions since the late 1980s at the chapter level of the California Native Plant Society, including chapter President (early 1990s), and Conservation Chairman (early 1990s). Rick was elected to the CNPS Board of Directors as a Director-At-Large in the early 1990s. Periodically, Rick leads field trips for the chapter, especially the Fall Color hike up Sisar Canyon, and gives talks on various botanical subjects.
Rick was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, but has spent most of his adult life in Ventura County. He attended Nordhoff High School and graduated from UCSB with a degree in Environmental Biology. Before his current employment with the City of Thousand Oaks as an Environmental Planner, Rick has been employed as a Bee Keeper (with Mr. Biggers of "bee beard" fame), a field entomologist in Oxnard strawberry fields, and an Assistant Staff Conservationist at the Ventura County Flood Control District.
Rick is a great naturalist, with volumes of knowledge about native plants and insects packed into his Canadian brain. Rick is particularly fond of entomology but is interested in all aspects of natural history, including herpetology, ornithology, and, of course, botany. He is an active member of the Ventura Audubon Society and has been Ojai sector leader for the annual Christmas Bird Count for the past twenty years.
Botanically, Rick's varied interests include pollination ecology, floristics, and the distribution of plants in Ventura County. His favorite plant families include Crassulaceae, Campanulaceae, and Polygonaceae. He and his wife, Trisha, have been working on a book on the flora of Ventura County for the past 20 years. Rick and his wife, Trisha, live in Oxnard with their two cats and two tortoises.
Scott Brown – Poster Master
Richard Bradley – Ventura Programs Host
Andrea Adams-Morden – Santa Barbara Programs Host
Connie Rutherford – Publicity
Chris Bysshe - Horticulture