Scott Butterfield

Lead Scientist
Terrestrial
[email protected]

In The Nature Conservancy’s California Chapter, Scott is the Lead Scientist for the Strategic Restoration Strategy in the San Joaquin Valley, Science Lead for the Rangeland Management Team at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve, TNC’s Lead for participation as a Managing Partner at the Carrizo Plain National Monument, Lead Scientist for the Protection Strategy, and the co-Lead for the development and application of RDMapper, TNC-CA’s remote sensing-based monitoring tool. Scott leads a San Joaquin Desert research team made up of university, agency, and NGO scientists, focused on addressing recovery goals for threatened and endangered species like blunt-nosed leopard lizard, giant kangaroo rat, and San Joaquin kit fox.

Scott holds a Ph.D. in Plant Biology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior from Michigan State University where he studied the application of remote sensing and other geospatial technologies to rangeland management and monitoring, and also their effect on and usage by the California rancher and range management community.

What Scott is working on now:

We recently launched four new science enterprises in the Land Program, including working with collaborators from 1) UCLA to use genomics to inform protection, management, and restoration of blue and coast live oaks across TNCs ~400k-acre grassland and oak woodland conservation estate in the face of climate change, 2) San Diego St. University to use new remote sensing tools, including Lidar sensors mounted on drones, to track real-time forage production across our grazed estate, 3) Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Bureau of Land Management to use wildlife cameras, TNCs wildlife camera platform, Animl, and machine learning to evaluate the impact of adding year-round free-standing water and removing or retrofitting fences across more than 100k acres on pronghorn populations in southern California (Water for Wildlife), and 4) Carrizo Ranch, a neighbor of TNCs newest grassland and oak woodland preserve, the Las Piletas Ranch, to test how we can use new virtual fencing technologies to achieve conservation outcomes from targeted grazing. In the Water Program, we launched a pilot strategic restoration project at Capinero Creek in Tulare County, and are beginning to demonstrate how to restore San Joaquin Desert habitat across retired farmlands in ways that are cost effective and done in collaboration with local partners, including the Tule Basin Land and Water Conservation Trust, and communities.