Vanessa Tobias

I’m much grumpier about everything than I was yesterday. Does that count?

Home - Western Conservation Leadership Development Program THE WESTERN CONSERVATION LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM builds leadership capacity for a diversity of partners to implement landscape conservation for the future.

I did WCLDP last year and I got so much more out of it than I expected. It literally changed the way I see leadership and how I interpret people’s actions. And I made a lot of strong people connections. It’s an intense time commitment and it’s expensive, though.
www.westernconservationldp.com

A photo of a multicolored tabby cat crouching on a notebook. The notebook is open to a page with a box and arrow diagram scribbled on it. The cat has one ear pulled slightly back, making her look annoyed.

Atcha is helping me turn the effects narratives from some water permitting documents into DAGs. I’m hoping this approach to reading will help me with paying close attention now and modeling in the future.

Tonight? Oh, sorry, I can’t. I have dance.

A photo of a small, tan dog with his face shoved in the middle of a seed catalog.

I’m getting closer to having the energy and enthusiasm back for posting about fish and stats models. In the meantime, here’s a picture of Penzey tasting a seed catalog. He’s the best little weirdo.

This is what I did with my holiday. I made a lot of salsa from tomatoes that I threw in the freezer back in August.

A photo of a multicolored tabby cat curled up into a sphere next to an orange throw pillow on a couch. In the background, rain falls into a swimming pool.

Atcha knows what to do on a rainy afternoon.

😱

Hi Sac Bee! You’re my local paper. I’m also a woman and a scientist. This headline makes you look sexist and I would really like to see you change it to center Dr. Bohon’s scientific credentials.

A photo of a small tan dog sitting in a big, round, green dog bed. He’s looking at the camera. There is a pile of office stuff in grocery bags and a tabby cat behind him.

This is a guy who is excited that we get to work from home again.

A photo of a sheet of paper that says “welcome to the Water Branch, Vanessa” with a photo of water with a dock.

First day at CDFW Water Branch!

Without naming your job, tell me something you say over and over again at work.

“No, I’m not just going to run a regression for you. What question are you trying to answer?”

Thank you!

A map of the Great Lakes showing the number of federal employees lost by each state

Since January 20, 2025, the #GreatLakes region has lost 19,450 federal jobs including at NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (which lost 20% of its workforce) + US Fish & Wildlife Service, threatening scientific research and ecosystem protection www.nemw.org/trump-admini...

I kind of had fun at my interview so I figured that was a good sign.

Thanks! 😊 It’s the smelt supplementation EPM position at Water Branch.

Water Branch- smelt supplementation program

A photo of a Fish and Wildlife Service badge holder with the Service patch embroidered on it.

Today is my last day working at the Fish and Wildlife Service. I’m taking leave next week, then I start a new job at the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife. I’ll continue to do science to support delta & longfin smelt recovery in the San Francisco Estuary, but I’ll be focusing on supplementation.

A photo of a Fish and Wildlife Service badge holder with the Service patch embroidered on it.

Today is my last day working at the Fish and Wildlife Service. I’m taking leave next week, then I start a new job at the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife. I’ll continue to do science to support delta & longfin smelt recovery in the San Francisco Estuary, but I’ll be focusing on supplementation.

A photo of a leafless Bradford pear tree branches full of small birds. The tree is a silhouette in front of a foggy, light blue sky.

There are so many cedar waxwings in the Bradford pear tree outside it looks like it has leaves that can jump around between the branches.

All week the new copilot plug ins have been offering to make summaries. Word even summarized the first sentence I wrote without permission. So I asked my email copilot chat to list my most common contacts because that would be legit helpful for an outreach project. It said “various state agencies.”

Thanks. That’s a good start. What else are you going to do?

Worth noting losses to federal science extend well beyond these programs, e.g., to Dept of Agriculture, Dept of the Interior, and elsewhere. We've lost 30% of our federal colleagues at the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center in the past year.

Rebuilding will take decades.

Lol we don’t even get a day off when the whole government shits down

How would you celebrate an ecological monitoring program turning 50 years old?

In case folks wonder why I haven’t been posting much lately, this is it. It’s draining and I don’t want to share my mood.

Today was the kind of low-key awful day working at a federal agency that makes me want to curl up on the couch for a week. Nothing specific. Just a lot of existential dread and some people doing their best to make it worse instead of better.

I think I just found my new goal for getting something into a published paper.

Thank you for acknowledging that this action was illegal. Please put some force behind your statement and impeach him. That’s really the first step in holding him accountable.

A photo of a rainbow arching across a stormy sky behind some trees and a rooftop.

Happy New Year! I hope this New Year’s Day rainbow is a good omen for positive change this year!