Hi,

I’m a wildlife biologist located in the Santa Cruz Mountains and I’ve been a biologist in CA for over 20 years now. I also love my herpetofauna. I work hard and play hard and I love to travel.

Most recently during the rainy season I’ve been doing a little “newt patrol” on the road I live on.
I’m doing this so I can move CA newts and Pacific chorus frogs just out of harm’s way (and off of the road) during commute hours to stop them from being roadkill. The amphibians are just trying to get to and from their breeding pond, but unfortunately they’re quite literally playing “Frogger”.

So, I didn’t ask to do this because I don’t have any spare time but somehow I am now heading up a low key project called Mitchell Dr Newt Patrol on iNaturalist. Currently, I’m working on identifying low cost solutions to solve our local roadkill problem. My husband and I don’t do full patrols, we do transects during the evening and morning commute to get the majority off the road when we can. We have a golf cart we jokingly call the Newt Rover so we can survey the full road ahead of cars and do our driving survey. We try not to take ourselves seriously and work to find realistic solutions to this problem.

Currently, I’ve been humbled by some amphibians. Especially the arboreal salamanders in the Santa Cruz Mtns- most of the ones I’ve seen over the last 20 years have been the light purple color so seeing black varieties in my neighborhood has been quite humbling to say the least. I also struggle with sexing newts. I am fine with identifying gravid females and breeding males, but the females and non-breeding males have caused me confusion and a bit of frustration.

I love to learn and continually take trainings to increase my knowledge. I have experience with listed snakes and amphibians throughout CA. I hold a USFWS recovery permit for CRLF and am applying for FYLF and CTS this year.

Thanks and nice to meet you!
Chrissie