Today, we’d like to introduce you to Thomas Oberbauer.
Hi Thomas, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My road to an interest in biology, ecology, and conservation planning began on a rural piece of property east of El Cajon, California. My parents and grandmother owned land used to grow avocados and occasionally used for oat hay. The surrounding lands and portions of their property were covered with natural Coastal sage scrub habitat, and nearby canyons supported oak woodlands. These habitats provided a diversity of wildlife, particularly birds.
My brother and I began watching birds at an early age, stimulated by the Audubon Western Bird Guide by Richard H. Pough and the Golden Book of Birds and one of my older sisters who took my brother and me on little explorations into the avocado woodland to look for birds. The number of species of birds we encountered was quite remarkable, and we discovered a very rare migratory bird on my parent’s property that was a new record for the area, and it attracted people from all over California.
The biology class I took during summer school included a project to identify a dozen species of plants and illustrate them in a booklet. From that point I was not just interested in birds but also plants and then with the menagerie of animals we kept as pets including Deer Mice, Spadefoot toads, Granite night lizards and even at one time a crow, my interest was not confined to any specific group. The geology of our area was also of great interest since some mountains nearby consist of Gabbro, black granite that acts like serpentine, which is known to harbor unusual and rare species of plants.
During our entire childhood, my parents took us on drives through San Diego County’s backcountry, forests, woodlands, deserts, and chaparral. Our mother pointed out locations she visited as a child, such as Mount Laguna and the various places she lived in, including Mission Valley, Fallbrook, and northeast of Escondido. While spending time at the San Diego State University Library during my time at college, I learned more about the fascinating locations in San Diego County, as well as forests and unique habitats in Baja California and on the California and Baja California Pacific Coast Islands.
I was able to work as a student intern for the San Diego County Planning Department while attending school, and this turned into a career in Land Use Planning. It was shortly after the approval of the California Environmental Quality Act that an assessment of biological and other environmental impacts for land development projects was required. Eventually, the concept of conservation planning became more necessary in order to address and conserve the multitude of rare and endangered species in San Diego County and provide for appropriate development in the less valuable habitat areas.
This was implemented through the Multiple Species Conservation Planning Program that was initially approved in the 1990s. I had a satisfying role in assisting its development. San Diego County, the City of San Diego, and other local cities were early supporters of this concept, and it has resulted in large areas of land being preserved for habitat. All the while that my career in conservation planning was taking place, I had a personal interest in the biological world of the unusual habitats in Baja, California, and especially the islands where species of birds and plants had evolved to survive in specific environmental parameters on the islands.
The idea that individual endemic species and subspecies of plants and animals represent a high-energy state through adaptation to one area or island is fascinating to me. Unfortunately, feral goats had been present on many of the islands, and they consumed and destroyed many habitats that caused the extinction of a number of the species which had evolved and become refined to these islands. Fortunately, the feral herbivores have been removed from the majority of the islands through major efforts by the United States Federal Government, the Mexican Government, the State wildlife agencies, and conservation organizations such as Grupo de Ecologia y Conservacion de Islas, Island Conservation Ecology Group and The Nature Conservancy.
The recovery has been astounding. I am very interested in continuing to study the vegetation on the islands as it grows back to some sort of representation of a natural habitat. My interest is ongoing. I have created a series of 10 mini-documentaries about the Baja California Islands on Youtube under the name of “PLnaturalresources”, all one word. Along the way, I found a life partner in my wife Irene, who was President and CEO of the San Diego County Credit Union, and we have two sons and a couple of grandchildren.
My wife had a health issue that she used to strengthen her resolve to assist women through the Susan G. Komen Foundation and children through the Make-A-Wish organization, where she passionately played a role until she passed away three years ago.
We all face challenges, but would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Conservation Planning in Southern California can be viewed as the coordination of potentially opposing forces to come to a satisfactory conclusion that no one may be completely happy about but with which all may be satisfied. It often involves working with landowners and wildlife agencies to identify the most important areas that need to be conserved and the less important areas that can be developed, as well as generating a mitigation program so that the important areas will be conserved.
These important areas may be contained in a particular property or they may be part of a mitigation banking program where the really important lands have been identified but funding is needed to pay for their conservation. Working on individual land development and conservation proposals may take years and involve extensive negotiations among all of the parties before an agreeable solution is reached.
Acquiring funding for conservation is always a major task, but partnerships between the State and Federal Wildlife Agencies and local governments has been successful and there has been a focus of funding to San Diego County because it was one of the early areas to embrace this planning concept.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe you can tell us more about your work next?
While working for the County of San Diego for 35 years, I worked my way through the environmental planner and land use planning process until I became division chief of the Multiple Species Conservation Program.
I was able to advance due to the recognition of my interests and background for the planning process, including providing me an opportunity that allowed me to advance beyond my expectations. I am most proud of the fact that I am able to provide answers to questions about conservation issues and the needs for individual species and programs.
Since I retired from the County of San Diego for more than ten years, I have been working as a biological consultant performing fieldwork that is very desirable and working on reports about local and regional issues. I am also proud of the fact that I was president of the San Diego Chapter of the California Native Plant Society for many years and was able to serve on the Board of Directors for the San Diego Natural History Museum for two terms.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share?
During the Covid-19 Crisis, I was working with the consulting company AECOM.
We had tasks involving monitoring and assessing important infrastructure out in the field and continued to work during the period of the peak health issue with strict safeguards to protect ourselves and others that we may have come into contact with.
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Tom Oberbauer
