Water Resource and Habitat Restoration Agroecologist Central Coast, CA
CURRENT WORK
Conservation Project Manager at San Mateo Resource Conservation District
Ryan works as a project manager on the Habitat Enhancement and Water Resources teams bringing to life projects that improve our coastal watersheds and serve the people, ecosystems, and farms of San Mateo County. Ryan's studies in Political Science and Economics at UC Berkeley and Agroecology at UC Santa Cruz provide a good background for working on projects at the crossroads of sustainable agriculture, water resource management, and land stewardship. Ryan has spent his career working on orchards in the Santa Cruz/Watsonville area, as a land manager in the Santa Cruz mountains, and as a project manager for water conservation, streamflow enhancement, and wildfire hazard mitigation projects across Central and Southern California.
His work at the RCD includes managing projects for agricultural water storage and irrigation efficiency, fish and wildlife habitat enhancement, and water rights agreements. In the field this looks like building irrigation ponds or tanks, dam removal or fish passage projects, and native plant installations.
His favorite part of working at the RCD is helping to restore watershed health along such a beautiful stretch of coastline while learning from the many farmers, ranchers, biologists, ecologists, engineers, foresters, builders, conservationists, and locals (human and non-human) that he gets to work with everyday. When he is not on the job, Ryan enjoys surfing, outrigger canoe paddling, grafting rare fruit trees, finding new varieties for his small chile pepper farm, and spending time exploring the outdoors with his family.
Learn more about San Mateo RCD
Fire Tongue Farms
Ryan and Levon founded Fire Tongue Farm in 2014. Their dream was to grow rare chile pepper varieties and smoke them with fruit wood from local orchards. All these years later and they are still finding the best rare chile peppers to smoke with apple and cherry wood from orchards in the Central Coast region.
Learn more about Fire Tongue Farm and thank you to Sebastian Fraye for the logo!
Past Work
Watershed Progressive
Ryan spent 2 years at Watershed Progressive working on projects related to water, wildfire, and agricultural resilience.
Ryan's work at Watershed Progressive centered on encouraging the widespread adoption of sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices in today’s agricultural system. After years managing orchards and perennial crops in the Central Coast region, his focus turned to helping growers with climate and water resiliency. He was tasked with bringing best management practices to farms and orchards in critical watersheds and inspiring a growing interest to build resiliency into agricultural systems across California.
His work at Watershed Progressive included water resource data analysis, evaluating best management practices for water efficiency, water resilience management plans, and regenerative land-use strategies.
His favorite part of working at WP was helping to build relationships and communities around solutions and hopefully shaping future water resource management in agriculture.
Learn more about Watershed Progressive
Orchard Keepers
Ryan spent 6 years at Orchard Keepers, working in home and commercial orchards in the Santa Cruz and Bay Area. His work included advising growers and landowners on best management practices for deciduous and evergreen fruit trees and other edible perennial crops like table and wine grapes, berries, and nut trees. His work at Orchard Keepers also involved helping clients with transitioning to organic practices and designing orchard layouts and irrigation systems.
Ryan performed all aspects of organic orchard care including planting, pruning, topdressing, fertility, irrigation, pest and disease management, harvest, and post-harvest handling. He also trained and managed a small team of orchard specialists tasked with the tracking and management of orchard sites across Santa Cruz, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties.
One of his favorite parts of the job was seeing the transformation of struggling or neglected orchards after a few years under the care and practices of Orchard Keepers.
Learn more about Orchard Keepers
