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Todd Lab Herpetolgy and Wildlife Conservation
Cathy in the field.

About Cathy


Cathy is a wildlife biologist with the USDA Forest Service and has been active in the conservation of amphibians in the Sierra Nevada, California. She received her BS in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in herpetology, and her MS in Forest Science from Oregon State University, Corvallis, where she studied large-scale population dynamics in pond-breeding amphibians. She served as team leader of the USDA Forest Service’s Sierra Nevada Amphibian Monitoring Program, which assessed bioregional status and trends of two federally listed amphibian taxa, the Yosemite Toad (Anaxyrus canorus) and the Mountain Yellow-legged Frog complex (Rana sierrae, R. muscosa). Cathy also has a wide range of professional experience in other areas of ecology and has worked as a computer programmer and database developer for research, private, and public organizations.

Cathy returned to graduate school to continue her research on amphibian conservation and completed her PhD in 2023. She remains interested in factors that contribute to population persistence in patchy, stochastic environments and how these inform effective and resilient conservation strategies. Her research focused on (1) hydrogeomorphic processes that create amphibian habitat in wet meadows with the goal of increasing the success of meadow restoration designed specifically for amphibians, and (2) the ecology of the Sierra Nevada Yellow-legged Frog (R. sierrae) in the northern portion of its range with the goal of developing effective conservation measures. In this portion of the species’ range, declines are most pronounced, the species primarily inhabits streams, and general ecological information is lacking. .