CalTrout is pleased to welcome Serena Doose to the team as our Mt. Shasta-Klamath Project Manager. Get to know Serena through her bio below.
Written by Serena Doose:
Growing up in the suburbs of Charleston, South Carolina, I didn’t have much exposure to the great wide world of the outdoors. Instead, most of my summers were spent playing in youth orchestra and being an armchair explorer through books, with occasional interludes of climbing the magnolia tree across the street.
In college, I majored in both Earth and Environmental Science and Asian Studies. Somewhat late in life, I had discovered that I loved being in nature; my gateway was gardening and plants. I remember checking out a book at our university library titled, “jobs in outdoor fields,” which prompted me to apply to the Student Conservation Association for an internship.
My first summer internship in Maine I worked with waterfowl and upland game birds, the next summer with native trout and salmon. For three months, my coworker and I traversed deep tangles of snow crushed alders with our backpack electrofisher, searching for native brook trout in order to prioritize stream-road crossing upgrades. Fraught with black flies, hordes of mosquitoes, and long days driving on dirt logging roads, I liked it more than I expected. The surprise of efishing a tiny, inaccessible stream, filled more with beaver chew sticks than water, and finding beautiful trout was joyful.
Flash forward ten years and I’m still in the world of fisheries conservation. I spent multiple years working throughout the state of Maine with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), then felt the pull of westward exploration. In 2017, I moved to Siskiyou County in northern California to begin the next chapter of my career with USFWS working on fish passage in the Klamath Basin.
Five years and one pandemic later, I was living in Mount Shasta and thinking about my next step forward. I had previously worked with numerous CalTrout staff on a variety of local projects, and was always impressed by their dedication, knowledge, and motivation. When I saw the job opening for Shasta-Klamath Project Manager, I was enticed by the culture of an organization solely focused on California, an opportunity to grow and test my skills as an on-the-ground project manager, and a shift in perspective to the world of non-profits. I’m excited to continue developing partnerships and conservation opportunities with CalTrout in northern California.
My time in this field has fostered a love for all things outdoors. My first and lasting love will probably always be backpacking and hiking, but I’m lucky to live in a place where gardening, skiing, biking, and rafting are also fantastic local options for recreation. I look forward to getting better at fishing, since my fishing trips usually just end up with me getting distracted and going swimming!”
