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Paso Robles–based biological and environmental firm Althouse and Meade works on a variety of projects that marry renewable energy infrastructure with the conservation of endangered and threatened species.
A recent project Paso Robles–based Althouse and Meade did for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife sounds, at first, relatively simple. The impact of the work, though, will be vast, says Paul Oyler, Althouse and Meade’s director of strategy and chief financial officer.
The biological and environmental services company created a vegetation map of the Southern California mountains and valleys, identifying botanical species in those areas and updating data that was most recently collected in the 1970s.
“We sent botanists to just about every piece of undeveloped land from Santa Barbara County south to San Diego County,” Oyler says. “The data we collected will have ramifications and repercussions in our industry and for the state writ large for the next 30 years. The results may inform legislation, regulation, future scientific study, and conservation efforts.”
The information will also provide a baseline for events such as California wildfires. “A lot of our work in the San Gabriel Mountains was completed before the Eaton Fire,” says Oyler. “So, California Department of Fish and Wildlife will be able to reference some of that data as they assess the recovery of those areas.”
For more than 25 years, the team at Althouse and Meade, Inc. has quietly worked behind the scenes on a wide range of missions that marry renewable energy infrastructure with the conservation of endangered and threatened species.
Founded in 2000, the company has particular expertise in California but takes on projects throughout North America. Studies often involve years of work, with funding provided by private enterprise, grants, and state or federal government agencies.
The work involves biologists, botanists, geospatial analysts, and project managers, and Oyler emphasizes that his work is very much behind the scenes. “Credit goes to the scientists who are out doing the day-to-day field surveys and the hard science, the project managers who interface with our clients and agency partners, and the principals who lead our teams,” he says.
One of those scientists is Ruby Molinari, a biologist and certified field botanist specializing in ecology, vegetation mapping, and restoration. A UC Santa Cruz grad with 16 years of experience in the field, Molinari assisted in the recently completed mapping project.
Her boots-on-the-ground role included long days of hiking, careful observation, and gathering and analyzing information. “I might set out on a remote trail or road looking for variations in habitat,” she says. “When I get to something like a repeating pattern, I study the composition of different plants. Then I take multiple measurements to make a species list of up to 20 different species that are occurring together. The next step is testing the soil and measuring the aspect, or slope and direction.”
Renewable energy sites such as solar can provide outstanding habitats for some of our threatened and endangered species.
– Paul Oyler, Althouse and Meade’s director of strategy and chief financial officer
The same careful observation and compilation of data go into the company’s involvement in western monarch butterfly monitoring. This work is in the company’s DNA, as co-founder and principal scientist Dan Meade, who passed away in 2022, was involved in monarch research before establishing Althouse and Meade in 2000.
Senior biologist and monarch butterfly specialist Charis van der Heide, along with a team that includes Molinari, works with the City of Goleta to count the number of overwintering butterflies at various Ellwood Mesa sites. From October to mid-March, monarch butterflies typically migrate to Goleta and other areas on the California coast to stay safe and warm during winter. Tiny trackers the scientists place on the spectacular winged creatures help them gather data for use in habitat management and restoration planning.
In other habitat work, Althouse and Meade partners with renewable energy clients to help them conserve threatened and critically endangered species as they expand and develop their sites.
A case in point is the San Joaquin kit fox effort in and around San Luis Obispo County. A small, tan fox with a bushy, black-tipped tail that weighs about five pounds when fully grown, the kit fox has been federally endangered since 1967. Althouse and Meade created solar panel array engineering that allows a natural landscape and supportive habitat to flourish beneath the panels. The kit fox population is larger now than it was before the installations began.
“Renewable energy sites such as solar,” Oyler says, “can provide outstanding habitats for some of our threatened and endangered species.”
