Betsy Macfarlan serves as Executive Director for the Coalitions, she joined ENLC in May 2001 as its first employee. Macfarlan completed a Bachelor of Science, and a Masters of Science in Ruminant Nutrition, at Colorado State University. Her education makes her a perfect fit for a coalition that believes wildlife, livestock and plant health come with a healthy, diverse landscape. Macfarlan joined the Coalition with over ten years experience as a executive director of non profits. She has extensive experience coordinating projects, including involvement in coordinating the 1st and 2nd Seeking Common Ground Livestock Big Game Symposiums. Having helped establish the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition, Macfarlan's position with the Coalition allows her the unique opportunity to combine her executive skills with her interest in science and research, while facilitating the improvement of the natural resources in her adopted home state. She continues to maintain her ties to agriculture by raising cashmere goats and making goats milk soap.
Julie Thompson joined ENLC in 2005 as the staff Ecologist. Julie Thompson graduated from Colorado State University with an undergraduate degree in Natural Resource Management and a M.S. degree in Forest and Range Ecology. While attending school, Julie spent her summers in the field assessing and studying the diverse vegetation communities and landscapes of Colorado and Utah. Post-graduation she expanded her knowledge of mountain and semi-desert ecosystems and plant identification skills while working on the USGS/NPS Vegetation Mapping and Classification Project in Zion and Canyonlands National Park, and Dinosaur National Monument. For the last three years, she has made her home in Ely, Nevada, exploring and working in the Great Basin. Here she works as an ecologist with the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition designing and implementing restoration projects and coordinating landscape-scale watershed assessments to further our understanding and conservation of the Great Basin.
John Watt joined ENLC in March 2005 as a minerals field technician. He conducts Compliance inspections for minerals Inspect and recommends resolution of expired mining notices. The information he collects, including documentation of weed infestations or other problems on minerals sites in incorporated into the watershed assessments. Watt grew up in a farming community in central Minnesota and worked within the agriculture and food processing industry from field to processing during his years there. He came to Ely from Alaska where he worked in the commercial fishing industry. Prior to Alaska he lived in Colorado working as an elk hunting guide and operating a backcountry winter camp within a Colorado State Park. His love of the mountains of the west and the public lands that exist there made Ely a perfect place to settle down. Initially Watt substitute taught for 5 years in Ely and spent summers in Alaska. Soon leaving Ely for the beautiful summer season became difficult and he managed to find work as a Wilderness Ranger for the Forest Service for one summer. This exposed him to the growing season of the Basin and Range and also the many mining sites, working and abandoned that dot the Basin and Range country. The chance to work with ENLC in joint efforts to rehabilitate/reclaim disturbed land was viewed by him as the perfect opportunity to unite his understanding of the value of the commercial use of natural resources with his love of the natural beauty of the west and his desire to see that beauty preserved.
Greg Gust joined ENLC in 2006 as the Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation (ESR) botanist. He was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI. While attending college at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he spent one year working in Dr. Hoot’s plant systematics laboratory. He conducted DNA sequencing on tuberous species in the Anemone genus, which are members of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae). Before graduating from UWM, he lived in Nepal for a year through the University of Wisconsin’s study abroad program. While there, he conducted ethnobotanical field work that culminated in a senior thesis. Upon graduating from UW-Milwaukee with a BA in Anthropology and minor in Biology (emphasis in botany), he worked as a bio tech for a field season in Washington’s North Cascades National Park. In 2002, he accepted a research specialist position at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown Center for Plant Genetic Resources. As the Center’s North American collection’s manager, he traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico collecting herbarium specimens and plant samples for chemical analysis. After living near the banks of the Mississippi River for nearly four years, the mountain west beckoned him back. His interests include botanizing, backpacking, gardening, floristics, ethnobotany, mycology, and searching for new populations of rare plant species.
Dominic Gentilcore has been involved with ENLC since 2007 in the ESR program. In 2009, he took over as an Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation (ESR) Biologist. He is the project manager for the ESR Monitoring project on BLM Ely District lands. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, but spent much of his youth recreating in the nearby Ozark Mountains. He received a B.S. in Biology from Saint Louis University in 2007. Throughout high school and college, Dominic worked as a database manager at a technology firm. For the last two and a half years of school, he also worked in a neuroscience lab dissecting Drosophilia brains and mapping brain regions using immunohistochemistry and florescent microscopy. He lived alone for six months on Antelope Island, Utah studying transfer stress in bighorn sheep and created a database for the project. He worked with the USGS National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette, Louisiana performing amphibian surveys. His personal interests include rock climbing, backpacking, National Public Radio, skiing and spending time in the desert.
Moira Kolada joined ENLC in 2008 as the Range Specialist and Wildlife Biologist. Moira graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno with an undergraduate in Animal Science and a M.S. in degree in Natural Resource Management-Wildlife Biology. Moira’s field studies for her masters program were conducted on the public lands surrounding Ely. This allowed her to develop a first hand appreciation of the Great Basin ecosystem. She moved to Ely in 2007 accepting a NEPA specialist position with the Great Basin Institute, but soon longed to be back outside. The chance to work with ENLC provided her with the opportunity to utilize her diverse background in range and wildlife.
Professional Associates
Dr. Barry L. Perryman is an assistant Professor at University of Nevada Reno. Dr. Perryman, a Rangeland Ecologist, received his Bachelor of Science Degree at Abilene Christian University, Masters of Science degree and Ph.D. at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Perryman works closely with the Coalition, serves on our research committee and collaborated with Robert Wilson and Dr. William Morrill to research and write a white paper titled "The Consequences of Doing Nothing".
