Co-Leaders Corner
The PNW CESU is excited to be celebrating its 20th anniversary!
In 2020, the National CESU Council approved the PNW CESU for a fifth five-year term (2020-2025). During the renewal process, The Evergreen State College joined the PNW CESU as our nineteenth university partner. In January 2021, we welcomed our third non-profit partner, Marine Ecology and Telemetry Research.
2021 has been a year of change on several fronts for the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (PNW CESU). Covid-19 continues to affect our lives and our interactions with in-person meetings being replaced by Zoom and Team calls. But we are still able to coordinate and implement many exciting cooperative projects.
July 2020 brought the retirement of Dr. Chris Lauver after eleven years as the PNW CESU Co-Leader, NPS Science Advisor, and Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Washington. During Chris’ tenure, the National Park Service collaborated with fifteen PNW CESU partners, supplying $39.8 million to fund 333 cooperative agreement projects, many of which included undergraduate and graduate students.
Last April, we were saddened by the death of Darryll R. Johnson, who was the first PNW CESU Co-Leader until his retirement in 2008. Prior to the establishment of the CESU network, Darryll had been the co-leader and social scientist with the NPS Cooperative Park Studies Unit (CPSU) at the University of Washington since 1978. His calm and professional approach and conservation ethic helped many NPS natural and cultural resource specialists reframe issues into research questions, gather data, and propose pragmatic management alternatives.
Dr. Regina Rocheforte, NPS Science Advisor, kindly served as Interim Co-Leader during 2020. Regina brought hands-on experience, having been involved in the PNW CESU’s initial projects in 2001. As the agreement technical representative on almost 50 projects through the PNW CESU, Regina partnering with seven of the PNW CESU university members on behalf of the National Park Service.
We are excited to welcome Alison (Ali) Ainsworth as our new NPS Science Advisor and PNW CESU Co-Lead. Ali is coming from Death Valley National Park where she has been the Terrestrial Ecologist since 2018. Prior to this, she was the Botanist for the Pacific Island Inventory and Monitoring Program. She is currently completing her Ph.D. on climate change effects on high elevation plant communities of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii. Ali can be contacted at: alison_ainsworth@nps.gov.
Dan & Ali, Pacific Northwest CESU
