In Spring of 2021 I took a class to become a certified California Naturalist. The class I took, known as CalNat for short, is, "A statewide program of the University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the UC California Naturalist Program is designed to introduce Californians to the wonders of our unique ecology, engage the public in study and stewardship of California’s natural communities, and increase community and ecosystem resilience." The class, known as CalNat for short, was full of information filled classes, interesting classmates, fun field trips, and knowledgeable teachers. In February of 2022 I had a chance to interview my teacher from the San Gabriel CalNat chapter, Roger Gray, about his experiences in the outdoors growing up in the greater Los Angeles area and what led him to teach this inspiring class.
Q: Thanks for meeting with me. How are you connected to the CalNat course?
RG: One of my jobs is being an instructor for the California Naturalist Course, among the many other hats I wear.
Q: How long have you lived in the Los Angeles area?
RG: I am a 4th or 5th generation resident of Southern California as my family moved to the Sierra Madre area in the 80’s – the 1880’s that is. Except for brief times in other places, a short time behind the Orange Curtain in high school, and some others I’ve lived in the San Gabriel Valley area my whole life.
LAINAD: Wow that’s impressive!
RG:Oh I don’t know about that….
LAINAD: Well I’m from Florida originally and I just mean people were impressed with me there for actually being from the state as it's a place where many people move for their jobs and the weather.
RG: Just like Southern California, that's true.
LAINAD: So what were your first impressions of the natural world growing up here?
RG: Well my family, the original ones who moved here from England, were middle class Victorians brought up on the idea of the “gentleman- scholar.” An emphasis on learning about the natural world has been passed down through generations as a sort of family tradition. I grew up with field guides that were my grandparents’ laying around the house. Additionally, living in the part of Pasadena I grew up in, it is very easy to see natural spaces. There were lots of hiking trails. The street that my childhood home was on in Altadena ended at a dirt road that led to the Chaparral.
I was also in Boy Scouts as a child and that introduced me to getting outdoors as well.
Q: Are there any specific memories that you have about being outdoors in your youth?
RG: I have three specific memories and I’ll give you all of them. The first was the awareness of rattlesnakes, not as a scary memory, but just that they were there and that they had to be thought about. Second was the sound that the creek below our house made during the rainy season, even though it was 1,200 ft below it was very loud and nice to hear. The third memory is the freedom I had to explore, ride bikes, and play in these wild spaces.
Q: As you grew up and learned about outside opinions about LA, did that change your experiences at all? Like have you ever heard someone actually call LA a desert? And what do you think they meant by that? Does it affect how you think of the nature in your home?
RG: I hear people call LA a desert all the time. It is incorrect but a very common thing for people to say. Our rainfall alone puts us above a scientific definition of desert climates but it is understandable that people feel our aridity and see how we are very different from say Florida, or some other east coast state, and it is very easy to think “desert”
It doesn't help that our ecosystem is also very unique and covers a very small area compared to the greater USA. We are just kind of weird here. But educating others about our ecosystem is part of what I do by teaching the CalNat course and I enjoy doing that.
The other way it is used is as hyperbole in order to emphasize special ecological demands, like water conservation. People say we are a desert to make a point that we need to conserve water, or plant native plants, or not build in fire zones.
LAINAD: Interesting, so in this last context do you think there is some good that comes out of the mischaracterization of LA as desert?
RG: I don't think speaking hyperbolically of southern California as a desert is harmful towards water conservation, but when people find out that it's not true the temptation might be to believe that the need to conserve water is not true as well.
Accordingly I think it is most appropriate to say that this is a Mediterranean type climate region, which means it has limited rainfall and limited water which should not be wasted on ornamental landscape plants or inefficient appliances.
Q- Do you think there is anything missing from nature in LA, if anything?
RG: Nothing is missing. It is all here. People say in my gardening circles that this or that species that might be harmful to native plants doesn’t matter because they are so far away from wildland spaces that their plants can’t do harm. But nowhere in LA county is more than twenty miles from a wildland space, and that’s well within the range of a bird’s ability to spread seeds.
LAINAD: So in a way you might be saying what is missing is an awareness about our proximity to wildland spaces?
RG: Yes, I took the question more literally at first, but I think it’s a good point and something I get to work on improving through the CalNat class.
Another missing awareness I come across often is regarding what an invasive is and isn’t. An invasive plant is has four criteria, and if even one is missing it is not invasive. It can be aggressive, and spread in your garden like a weed; but that is not invasive.
Invasive-ness requires a plant to be non-native to the specific ecosystem; self-propagating and self-sustaining away from human help; and able to out-compete and replace native plants or otherwise cause some ecosystem damage. If it can only spread in a yard where there is irrigation water, even if it takes over, it is not invasive. If it is an agreesive native plant that belongs in that ecosystem, it is not invasive.
What I get to do through the Master Gardener program is teach how we can act to not affect our wildlands accidentally because we all live close to them, even if it doesn’t always feel like it in the city.
Q: That sort of leads me to asking more about the work you do in education through the CalNat course? What led you to teaching this class?
RG: I actually had a whole career as a trial lawyer but due to family demands of being a single parent after a divorce I started substitute teaching to have a more family friendly schedule. Since I had a science credential in addition to my journalism and law degrees, I often found myself teaching science classes at the middle schools where I was subbing. My other favorite subject to teach was history. You know you can’t teach science without history. They always group science with math, but it’s the history that is important too.
Along with the science classes I often was put in charge of the school gardens which eventually led me to getting certified as a Master Gardener through the UC Coperative Extension classes. Learning more about gardening helped me see that we can impact the larger world through what we do in our small gardens.
Additionally I found out about the CalNat class online and found it unified my interests so much that I wanted to take the certification class for many years. When I was finally certified, I also knew I wanted to offer the class to others in a similar position to me in the San Gabriel Valley.
Due to schedule and location misalignments I never got the chance to teach the class until right before the pandemic hit. I had arranged our first class for spring 2020 but had to scramble to quickly adapt to come up with how we teach the class currently, which is a hybrid model.
Q: So what does the hybrid model look like? And are there any surprising benefits?
RG: Yes! The hybrid model means we have most of our classes digitally through Zoom but a lot of this class has to be hands-on so, we meet for field trips and Walkabouts to do hands-on naturalist work in the field.
The benefits have been being able to bring in guest speakers from around the state to talk to the class through Zoom. We have had many speakers who have shared their specialized knowledge with classes that might might not have been able to otherwise. For example, we had a fairly famous nature journaling instructing from Northern California do a presentation for us, the author of our favorite field guide on bees (also up north), and by happenstance the newly announced director of California State Parks zoomed-in one night to discuss careers there.
Additionally many students who may have lived too far from the class or would not have had time due to busy schedules are able to take the class digitally when it cuts out the commute time. Which is a great bonus for more people to be able to access the class.
Q: Who takes this class?
RG: Every possible sort of person has taken this class. We have very young students who are just starting their careers who are often working in nature related fields. We have retired individuals who maybe worked in unrelated fields but have always had an interest in natural history and ecology but never had the time to pursue it.
LAINAD: And I guess I’m a different kind of category, being unemployed due to the pandemic and suddenly having time mid-life to pursue new interests?
RG: Yes, anyone with an interest in learning about their environment can take this class.
Q: What do you think the impact on the larger community is through students taking this class?
RG: The class creates a volunteer cadre for local non-profit environmental groups. One goal is to train potential volunteers so that they have some knowledge to take to their volunteer work in their communities. Students walk away knowing more about our local ecologies, the plants and animals that live here, and also interpretive skills to help others learn.
I also see the impact in creating grassroots-scientists who use tools like iNaturalist to ID the plants and animals around them and in the process accumulate data that is then available for scientists to use in studies and papers. People who take this class learn to observe and see, which leads to knowing what's in their yards and in the National Forest and therefore they can better take care of both.
LAINAD: On becoming a better observer, I never thought I was into learning about bugs or birds. I was a hiker and so I saw plants as I walked by. But with enough slowing down and taking the time to really look at those plants it was a quick natural progression to seeing the bugs on the plants and the birds on the branches and wondering what they were. It’s like being curious about one thing just leads to more things to be curious about. The questions never seem to end. Which is exciting!
RG: Absolutely. There is so much to see and learn and that never changes. I also was not into bugs as a kid, thought they were yucky, etc. But once I started gardening I naturally grew an interest in learning about the bugs I was seeing in my garden. Which insect was “good” or “bad” to use colloquial terms. But meaning what bug was going to eat too much of the food I wanted and what bug was going to eat that bug. You start to learn about a whole ecology of plants and insects. Insects don't live in a vacuum. You get to learn about the whole network of organisms.
Q: So what might be a favorite memory of teaching this class? Your favorite aha! Moment that students have?
RG: Exciting moments happen all the time in this class. Students come in with different levels of knowledge but they all share an excitement for learning and an interest in the natural world. Seeing the excitement students have for learning is my favorite aspect of teaching this class.
Q: It seems like there is a lot to be excited about taking a class like this in a big city like Los Angeles but not everyone is aware of how close we are to wildland spaces. Is that why the class has a focus on the urban/ wildland interface and what does that mean?
RG: Almost everyone in Southern California actually lives in the wildland urban interface. Some communities are closer to the mountains, some communities are closer to riparian zones that run through them, and some are closer to beaches (which are a sort of wildland). But the failure to recognize that even downtown LA is within 15 miles of a national forest means that people feel their actions don't affect "nature." This is of course incorrect even if you don't live near the National Forest, but is especially true where pretty much every part of greater Southern California is part of the wildland urban interface.
Q: What other unique angles does the San Gabriel Valley Cal Nat class have to offer?
RG: We put more focus on interpretation than other CalNat classes offer. Doing interpretative work is different from teaching Good teachers often make use of interpretive guide techniques, but the two disciplines are separate. Interpretive guides don't have a captive audience, don't have a test at the end of their interaction, and strive to provoke people to think about a place and make their own meaning. Teachers generally have a specific factual or conceptual framework to promote in the form of standards, in addition to those other differences. Certainly one can be a naturalist and a teacher, but many volunteer positions and many more paid positions for naturalists involve acting as an interpretive guide rather than an instructor.
Q: So how can anyone reading this learn more about this exciting class?
RG: The California Naturalist website that lists certification courses up and down the state is CalNat.ucanr.edu. There are several courses offered in southern California, and many noore elsewhere; in different formats with different emphasizes. Folks can hear about our CalNAt SGV course there, or drop an email to CalNatSGV@gmail.com. We are also on facebook. Our SGV course starts April 19, 2022, and we do have a few seats left.
Comments