Ann Croissant
Director of the San Gabriel Mountains Regional Conservancy, and the Glendora Community Conservancy
“Planning is not always the most important thing. Planning may result in zero and most often it does. It’s when people are educated to recognize opportunities when they surface and do something about it that you really make a difference in regional planning and local planning.”
Devyn: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. As a reminder, I’m Devyn an Environmental Economics and Politics major at Scripps. My partner wasn’t able to make it today due to scheduling conflicts so it will just be you and me.
Ann: Ok.
Devyn: So overall, we’re gathering stories and insights from local leaders who have a lot of experience bring about change in their communities. So we were hoping that you could tell us a bit about your background, and what you would identify as some of the most important initiatives, or projects, or struggles, or other instances of change that you have been involved in. And we can then use that as a source of follow up questions to leverage some of your thoughts about what it takes to bring about change at local levels. And with your permission, I’ll record the conversation on my phone, type it up, and run the transcript by you for approval before posting it on a password-protected site.
Ann: Alright, sure.
Devyn: Alright, so what you identify as some of your most important initiatives, projects or struggles?
Ann: Probably when we’re talking about most important, there are many different kinds of issues that we’ve had to deal with through the several decades we have been around. They cannot be equally ranked. Results are what we look at as being important. Sometimes great ideas projects do not work or produce much, but poor ideas with the right timing become important steps forward.
That said, watershed projects of various types have met the greatest needs. Projects focused on watershed include: mapping of key watershed areas, acquiring via grants watershed properties, plus restoring, managing, and researching are all of importance in meeting challenges over the last generation in environmental care of our natural areas and communities.
All of these issues have had to do with planning and development, particularly in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
Threats of loss of key natural resources continue to bond diverse communities now and future. As individuals and as community members, we have gathered together to form coalitions concerned about changes which might bring water shortages, poor water quality, in particular.
In addition, loss of watershed, loss of trails, and loss of recreational opportunities have been held in high esteem contributing high value in both the public and city priorities. Built out communities and/or overbuilt communities are the current struggle. Recognizing solutions is a constant challenge, even when needs for particular solutions are not obvious. The need may emerge next month. It is vital that citizen-groups like ourselves, knowledgeable of history, resources, connectivity, collaboration continue to be studied and ready when such needs or struggles arise. As I said, although planning may be important, it is not always the most important thing in making the most of pending changes in neighborhoods or communities or regions. Planning may result in zero and most often it does. It’s when people are educated to recognize opportunities when they surface and do something about it, including influencing elected or city staffs that you really make a difference in regional planning and local planning.
In Glendora, we have a powerful example of how “a poster flower”, not a plan retained much of the natural resources and economic value of the community causing a shift to other kinds of incentives and development than the natural/ wildlands areas. The “poster flower” is a very unique, small, purple-flowered plant which our conservancies, namely, the Glendora Conservancy rescued from extinction in spite of planning for development. The timing was right for the first grant, and the largest of the known populations of the plant at that time, was purchased with that first grant the Conservancy wrote. Since then more grant purchased and donated land, totaling 640 acres, with the federal and state-listed endangered Brodiaea filifolia (“thread-leaved brodiaea”) have become part of the reserve for what now has been genetically determined as the purest and most important populations of B. filifolia in the world, also preserved with its native pollinators.
Also of significance regionally and nationally have been our sponsorship of studies and research. Included among these are Reconnecting the San Gabriel Valley (2000), the first of the regional watershed studies in our area since the Olmstead Brothers completed their study in 1930, and The SGMRC national SSI/ Sustainable Sites Initiative Study (2007), focusing on Integrated BMPs for Urban Wildlands Interface. We also have completed and are going into 2nd Edition of Wildflowers of the San Gabriel Mountains. Check out our websites for our many projects: www.sgmrc.org, and www.glendoraconservancy.org .
I should probably stop here, because I could go on for another hour in showing how the circumstance and opportunities converged for a very successful conclusion, contributing to a healthier, more recreational community while preserving natural resources, protecting watershed, and sustaining community property values.
Devyn: Oh no, please continue. We want to hear as much information as you can provide.
Ann: Alright, a few more examples. So as far as the background, being able to recognize [these problems] goes back to who we are. And if we were in other professions we might not have seen this or recognized these matters as opportunities. What I’m alluding to is: the importance of preparation, training, and experience. But as professors at Universities in the sciences with a shared concern, we knew that we had to get involved in the community process, because so much ignorance was being shared instead of [truth].
Actually, using our own training and experience and success from the universities and research, and also our connections with other university people and research, we more easily recognized opportunities and possess the tools to effect projects for community good, even though we didn’t have the money. Everything probably would not have happened if [this had been through] somebody who was in real estate or a banker or someone who was in investments. Communities work best when they have good representation and training as part of their planning processes. What I’m emphasizing here is the importance of “microcosm models” for community think tanks, projects, and feedback. Diversity of opinion and training is vital in reflecting a community values, identify, sense of place. Such groups sense success, relevance, and severity more than broad samplings of the population. Sometimes this is called “informed opinion”.
A distinction and advantage of our organization, is the community-based focus. All of the community is of importance in our perspective, not reflecting an environmental bias to either extreme of the environmental continuum of organizations. The balance of our boards also gives us the strength of variations in perspective required to provide more comprehensive investigations of community needs in planning. It is vital as well to be fluent in community history and what is called institutional memory. All of the above have proven significant in our successes locally and regionally.
Struggles continue even with good planning and preparation, if funding is inadequate, if contingencies are not built in, if short and long-term impacts are not thoroughly looked at and combined, and if succession is in any way overlooked.
It also needs to be pointed out that, as thinkers and visionaries, we find ourselves often-times five or more years ahead of the curve in finding grants that meet and prepare for a changing society. For example, we have been and continue to be ahead in our thinking and research for applications to planning, services, and shifts in climate and in second responders (recovery planning/implementation). New ideas and new thinking arrive at funders who are out of touch. This is not new, and the disconnect/impasse is very disappointing.
Years ago, several of us attended a Peter Drucker conference at the Claremont Colleges on vital needs, roles, and responsibilities of nonprofits. We still utilize many of thoughts and ideas of that conference. More such quality conferences and outreach should be sponsored. Needed is a stronger nonprofit sector contributing to the quality of community engagement.
Devyn: Do you have any suggestions to expedite or facilitate local policy making or pushing though the bureaucracy as it pertains to the environment?
Ann: Every single department of the city should have something to do with environment or some aspect of environment. It’s more like a web of connections rather than a staircase. It’s not like a hierarchy; it’s more like a web. For example, instead of budget competition, city staffs and departments need to be reaching out to each other and talking to each other, partnering with each other in inter-departmental meetings and pursuit of goals held in common. In addition, field trips on community topics, such as water conservation, watershed, balanced planning, etc. are important to language and goals held in common, shared by staff and discussed publicly. Too many city staffs are more like islands in a sea of separation than commonality. Is it any wonder that the public feels controlled or distant and/or disconnected to planning as well as other city governance when the departments are isolated. The need for a web of understanding is essential. With water the vital resource and watershed planning the way to get there for the most basic of community plans it is vital we all be on the same page. History has proven too many times that if you don’t take care of your watershed, it’s only a matter of time and there will be no future for that city or that community. We need to connect in sync more than plan endlessly, especially as isolates!
Devyn: So, can you tell me a little bit about your personal background and how you got to where you are today?
Ann: My university background comes from University of Northern Colorado, B.A., University of Wisconsin, M.S., and from USC, Ph.D. My interests professionally have continued through the years in the biological and earth sciences and education, specifically in botany, science education, curriculum, and higher education. At Wisconsin, my main focus and research in the botanical sciences was in plant physiology where I was named an NSF fellow with research in comparative boron requirements in relation to structure/function, and I focused on plant health/ mineral nutrition of plants and the importance of integrative land management for health, habitat, and survival. At the University of Northern Colorado I majored in biology and math but also had an emphasis in earth sciences. So I have had both broad and in-depth training and background in the sciences, including teaching 30 years, part time and full time. I have attained the rank of Professor Emeritus. My husband has Colorado State University, University of Idaho, and University of Wisconsin for his background in all kinds of land management and plant breeding and crop production, including plant genetics, experimental design, and biometry. So he dealt with food and plants from a practical perspective in contrast to my theoretical perspective. And the future of food production for people as it relates to nutrition, hunger, land management, etc. He is also Professor Emeritus, having taught at Cal Poly, Pomona for nearly 40 years. Needless to say, we work together as a team.
Devyn: So, when establishing the conservancy and all of these projects and programs have you encountered any red tape from the bureaucracy or government?
Ann: Absolutely. Probably one of our biggest difficulties right now is that we have all these great ideas and we have all this experience, and creativity, and we’re being held down by paperwork and compliance and reports. All the time, energy, and cost required by compliance takes away from our time and focus as a nonprofit with little funding, many volunteers, yet with great interest and opportunity to help as other groups, for-profits, and agencies cannot do. We have to spend more than fifty percent of our time doing paperwork, reports, and meeting criteria and it’s destroying really our whole model. Especially a conservancy model that is community based. It’s shifting the fulcrum or the point of balance towards less energy in the field and more energy at the computer, and that can be devastating. Active land management, nor paperwork is the secret to our success.
Because others in environmental services and research in California were found to be untrustworthy, all such organizations have been punished. Such rebuke of all is a great inequity to carry and still survive as organizations with such a burden of responsibility and paperwork for society as a whole. Such over-reaction in governance is a major threat to the assistance dutiful organizations can carry and give for the greater good of society. If continued and expanded, bureaucracy will eventually be the crushing load on creativity and initiative of nonprofits, such as ourselves.
Devyn: So what would you identify as the most difficult hurdle you’ve encountered in establishing your programs or the conservancy, or projects
Ann: Actually, the more we grow the more difficult it becomes. And it’s because of the bureaucracy, because of the red tape. It was much easier twenty years ago to accomplish solutions, to be creative, to make changes, to protect the environment, all of that. It was much easier. The people at that time also had a more idealistic and altruistic point of view that something could be done. Today people are enslaved by entertainment, whether it’s sports or movies, or hand held technology. They’ve given up, they’ve become cynical, and when that happens there’s not a lot you can do. You become your own worst enemy if you do not give a part of your life to the care and of the environment. Stewardship needs to be everyone’s business!
Devyn: So what are some of these environmental challenges that the San Gabriel valley faces in the upcoming years?
Ann: We’ve had them all. In fact I think I discussed a lot of those in specifics.
Devyn: Yeah. Well then how do you go about procuring grants and endowments for your conservancy to face these challenges?
Ann: Well that’s another thing too. The funding, for the most part has come less an less from the bond measures, which also have become highly political in distribution of funds, particularly in light of the current research on natural resources decline and water rarity. Agencies through due diligence approvals are increasingly providing opportunities for organizations such as ourselves to find funding. Unfortunately, red tape is showing up there too, plus increased competition for funds. Examples include federal funding for restorations via the Army Corps of Engineers Mitigation Programs. Similar state programs include the California Department of Fish & Wildlife preservation and mitigation programs.
Devyn: So how do you think we should combat this problem of I guess reactive politics when it comes to the environment?
Ann: Well, probably one of the most important things is to have qualified people in positions of decision making. That includes both sides of the issue. We must have qualified people in governance and city staffs, as well as qualified people providing the services as nonprofits. That includes the elected officials too with qualified training and experience to make wise decisions. Armchair environmentalists and newspaper readers are not enough to make complex environmental decisions and planning. Surveys and polls are not enough. So also it seems that from generation to generation we continue to learn that money is not enough. Decisions are still complex and are not easily made without training, testing, and time. And finally, as John McPhee says in his foundational treatise, The Control of Nature (1989), people, planners, and decision-makers must learn if there is to be any progress in environmental decision-making and management that “nature always wins”, so it behooves us as stewards of the planet to work within natural systems, not against those systems!
Finally, it takes more than an MBA, it takes scientific rigor to make valuable environmental decisions on any level: planning to design to implementation.
Devyn: So it seems like information and education are very important aspects to environmental advocacy. What are some of the things that your organization is doing to promote better environmental education?
Ann: It has to be the right kind of education; it’s not just the degree. It has to have the rigor especially of the scientific degree, not just activity approaches. If you want to do generalization and if you want to be able to communicate with people that’s great. But you also need the rigor of the scientific background in order to truly know the different kinds and levels of inquiry and critical thinking, as well as scientific and mathematical models which are missing in the vast majority of activity-based education. Sorry, environmental education is not cut and paste, arts and crafts, cutesy games education. Nevertheless, when the basics are learned in the sciences and math, it’s amazing how fulfilling and enjoyable science and environment can be. Nevertheless, science education research has shown there to be many variations to suit a variety of learning styles and needs so that “nature education deficits may be met”. With new brain research, including right/left brain techniques, as well as gifted and special needs curricula, and cultural docent models there continues to be an expanding menu of options in what/how to better construct curricular needs. It’s not the quantity of education, but the right kind of education.
Our organizations have written and deliver a number of nature education, environmental education, and watershed education through our three, soon to be four, Nature Centers part of our Nature Centers Network in the San Gabriel Valley. The Conservancies provide a variety of programs and projects for Scouts, families, schools, classrooms, service at our centers and land holdings for field trips, children’s forest, trail walks, bird walks, plantings, soil sampling, camps, Brodiaea Month (peak of flowering of the endangered plant rescued from extinction in Los Angeles County), etc. Our most recent concentration has been Operation Phoenix: Rising from the Ashes – a three-year fire recovery program/projects for the Colby Fire, January 2014. The Conservancy lost 300 acres of natural area to the fire. The program provides a menu of project options for all ages, all sized groups to participate in this Valley-wide recovery plan. The three-year recovery includes projects, sequences, and integrations based on natural systems and processes as essential to the recovery and preparatory to the next fire in the chaparral ecology cyclical fire regime. We work with families with pre-school children to graduate programs/ projects at the university level.
Devyn: I guess also, what type of programs is your –
Ann: Okay, gotcha. What we have done in the past, again we have led in our watershed management groups as many as 200 stakeholders. Now that means, for all these different people in the community, we have held presentations and conferences. We have been sponsored by businesses like Edison, universities, and cities for conferences, earthdays, festivals, and workshops. And we have invited people from all levels to come and hear major speakers and discuss what was presented. Our Environmental Roundtables run for several years during the Watershed Management Plan education/participation portion was very well received and successful. Our WOW/ War on Weeds Conferences have attracted as many as 50 – 70 people – mostly professionals, but a few homeowners or hobbyists. We also do outreach, giving presentations to senior citizens, the Arboretum, Garden Clubs, Hiking Clubs, Service Clubs, Historical Societies, etc.
We still hold from time to time conservation workshops that the public is invited to at no charge. Currently, we have had less interest in workshops except for getting out into the field to do planting projects, or cleanups.
Devyn: So at your round tables and conferences and talks is there a large percentage of young people there or is it mostly the older community?
Ann: It’s mostly professionals, unfortunately. It’s people who know something about the topic who come, or the presenters who ask them to come. Even with the professionals, they may be looking for professional development units. If we give a Bug Expo or Science Fairs at the Library, we have had several hundred kids with parents in tow show up.
We also have community workshops by the way. We had a yearlong series on water, and also done a month emphasis on endangered plant species. We’ve offered walks and tours the whole month of May (Brodiaea Month) in Glendora. So we have a variety of activities and get a lot of people that way. However, for many of the people who come, it depends on their interests or needs, such as looking to ask a specific question for free advice. And, that’s OK too. Many are looking for Conservation Makeovers. We have a Team in the Conservancy qualified to give advice and/or design and install water conserving gardens. Many who come are interested in flowers.
Devyn: It seems like these presentations and roundtable talks are beneficial to the community, so how do you think we could get more people to show up to these or younger people or less educated to show up to these?
Ann: It would be through the city. A lot of times the city has better PR in getting notices out than we do. However, even though this is very important to the city, they will not help us with free information routing or even putting things in their city news. Same thing with school districts and even colleges and universities. They want the benefit of our expertise and meeting their goals, but tend to work in a closed system instead of open or partnering system. Sometimes professors will give extra credit if students will attend workshops, or schools will give service hours for doing field projects. Unless students come several times, they don’t seem to catch on to what the Conservancies actually do that helps them with “air, water, soil” in community health and benefits.
Even as a professor, I was always one who insisted on getting my students into the real world to test what they were being taught in reality. Sometimes students did not like that.
Devyn: Well, you seem very nice to me.
Ann: It’s because I want the best for the people is why I continue to be dedicated to environmental care and stewardship. A lot of times that’s not something you get paid for. Nevertheless, there is an economic value of environmental care and a balance in housing and wildlands for community benefit to most people. As a mentoring professor, it’s my thinking that building people builds programs, not vice versa. I like to build people and have seen good results from that approach to environmental learning and care.
Devyn: Well, do you have any other things or point that you’d like to add?
Ann: One more thing, and I think it’s essential and it’s usually overlooked. Many of the environmental topics are endless and it would depend on who you’re talking to as to what kinds of results you would be working toward. But so much of environmental emphasis seems to be about people here and now, not thinking of the Next Generation. There just is not enough invested in what we do that lays the foundation for the Next Generation to succeed or fail.
Just this week, I had a student who invited me, to a school in Pasadena. She found the Conservancy website and asked to visit our projects and interview me. What’s interesting is her school assignment based on a theme, The Power of ONE. The theme emphasized how important each person is, and how the dedication of one person with energy and passion can make a huge difference where we live or in the world. This was not textbook; it was real world learning by investigating and making sense out of the needs our community. She saw the meaning of the Power of ONE in stewardship through the work of our organizations in making a difference in the world tomorrow, in saving a plant species from extinction, in conserving our most valuable natural resource – our fresh water, in contributing to health wild environments and to community health of air, water, soil, and more………..thinking FUTURE. That is, now is the time to plant the seeds of environmental understanding for the Next Generation. Bottomline: The most important message personally about environment today for the majority of people is that “healthy environments make healthy people”.
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