We’re so busy protecting land that we needed more help! Please help us welcome Lynnette Batt as our new Conservation Director.
Lynnette grew up in western Maine, in a small town called Farmington. Her family had an 80-acre horse farm where she grew to love horses and riding. It was also in this rural foothill area that she developed a love of nature. She considers herself a “woods girl”, spending afternoons hiking and climbing trees when she wasn’t on her horse.
After high school, Lynnette attended Bowdoin College in Maine where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Environmental Studies. She was also on the Nordic cross country ski team and played women’s rugby (something we don’t see too much here on the west coast).
She later attended Duke University in North Carolina to receive a Master of Environmental Management (MEM) in Ecosystem Science and Conservation, and focused on water resource management and restoration ecology.
She stayed in North Carolina nearly a decade, working several years as the Associate Director of River Restoration for the national nonprofit American Rivers. Her work there included developing a new river restoration program for North Carolina and other areas of the southeast. She also developed a regional GIS model to prioritize dam removals, and created partnerships with US Fish & Wildlife Services to expedite projects and reduce costs.
She was then hired by a company called Unique Places, LLC, a conservation real estate company, to be their Director of Ecological Restoration. She spent the next couple years managing the development of private stream and wetland mitigation banks in North Carolina.
Lynnette met her partner Brian Graber while working at American Rivers, where he is the Director for River Restoration. They had the opportunity to move to California in 2015, as Brian relocated to the American Rivers’ Nevada City office. They have lived in Grass Valley for the past two years with their two shepherd mix dogs, and Lynnette’s quarter horse.
She misses snow and being around the water from the many Maine lakes, but said the Mediterranean climate in California is amazing and brings a lot of opportunity for conservation (and takes quite an adjustment.) She shared the story of hiking at Fairy Falls in the Spenceville Wildlife area on a hot day in August soon after they arrived in California. By the time they were hiking back, the trail had gotten so hot that they had to carry one of the dogs back three miles on their shoulders.
In addition to hiking and cross country skiing, she enjoys backpacking, climbing, and horseback riding and horse training. We’re excited to have her as part of the PLT team!
That brings our staff up to a total of nine, all working hard to protect and preserve natural and agricultural land in Placer County.
