December Chapter General Meeting

Chapter Meeting

Monday, December 9, 2024 at 7:30 pm

Flora of the Northern Sierra Nevada - Botanical encounters off the beaten path

Speaker: Tanya Baxter M.S.

On over 1,146,000 acres Plumas National Forest hosts some of the most diverse habitat in the northern Sierra Nevada range. Since 2023 Tanya Baxter and crews of consultant botanists have been documenting remote, rugged, and often unvisited portions of the national forest around the area of Quincy for a fuels reduction mitigation inventory. Over the last few years several large fires have ravished the yellow pine forests of Plumas National Forest and drastically impacted the ecology and timber harvest. Numerous new rare plant populations were documented during these botanical surveys. This talk will cover an entertaining hour of plant communities, botanical highlights, scenic sections of the Feather River, and the unexpected field encounters.
Tanya Baxter M.S. is a botanist and ecologist. With over a decade of expertise in land management she has led landscape-scale restoration projects for the national park service and innovative collaborations with non-profit partners. She led a multi-year grant to eradicate the most invasive species on 75,000 acres in Marin County combined with a dedicated volunteer program.
Tanya conducts rare plant surveys in remote areas rugged areas. She has roots in fire science and has served as a natural resource advisor on wildland fires in Yosemite National Park. With a specialty in riparian habitats, coastal fire fuels reductions, native plant revegetation design, and northern Sierra Nevada flora. She teaches a field course on plant taxonomy at San Francisco State University each June that is open to the public. See more at Baxterbotanical.net