I live in the Virginia Piedmont of the US, and have 30 years experience in environment and sustainable development, mostly internationally. I started out fighting forest fires on US Forest Service hotshot crews, then became a Park Ranger, working in Sequoia/Kings Canyon NPs, Yosemite NP, Big Cypress National Preserve, and the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Then I went to Sierra Leone in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer and worked for almost four years managing two WWF conservation projects. After than I worked for two decades for IUCN, and now am self-employed as a conservation planner. I'm married and the father of two. My current preoccupations are community empowerment through mapping and planning, community resilience in the face of catastrophic change, and conservation finance.