The Catalyst: The Newsletter for Interpretation in California State Parks

The relationship between California State Parks and its volunteers is critical to our mission. The person who shoulders the responsibility of nurturing and assisting the staff who coordinate the many volunteers contributing their time and skills to our parks programs is Rachel Young, Volunteers in Parks Program Coordinator in the Partnerships Division. The Volunteers in Parks Program had been part of Interpretation and Education for forty years, before moving over to the Partnerships Division in 2018 along with Cooperating Associations, other nonprofit partners, and Concessions. Rachel began working with the department in May of 2018, about six months prior to the transition. The first big project was to roll out “Better Impact,” the statewide volunteer management software, which, among other things, tracks the hours and schedules of volunteers. Volunteer Coordinators in the field assume the responsibility of working with volunteers and maintaining a park’s volunteer program. When adde...

What will you be doing on September 7th? If you interpret in a California State Park, maybe you’ll be behind an outreach table talking about how easy it is to identify any living thing with the powerful AI tools in the free phone app, iNaturalist . And maybe you’ll explain how other devoted iNaturalist users will verify your observations to become research-grade data that fills out the picture of our state’s extraordinary biodiversity. That is just about all it takes to run a “bioblitz” and to transform a casual park visitor into a community scientist for California Biodiversity Day . Leah Gardner will certainly be busy on September 7th and throughout the now-expanded California Biodiversity Week. As a Senior Environmental Scientist and the Statewide Botanist for California State Parks, Leah has been involved in the Department’s participation in this multi-agency event since it was established by Governor Brown in 2018. In that time, she’s seen participation in the event grow from just...