Theresa Menard
Conservation Planner / GIS Specialist
The Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i

Theresa rocks! The data integrity and mapping components of our ecoregional plan would be nowhere without her! Talk to anyone who knows, and they'll confirm this fundamental truth. However, she is quite tardy with submitting us her short bio, so we are cobbling one together out of Google and other sources:

Theresa was raised on the mainland in urban and suburban settings. When she was 10,  her family visited the Grand Canyon and she first saw a park ranger and decided she wanted to be one. But she also wanted to be a hula dancer in Hawai'i. "But by the time I got here (in 1990) my knees were shot from hiking up and down steep hills," at conservation jobs on the mainland, Theresa said, so she never took a hula lesson.

But working as a biologist for The Nature Conservancy's Natural Heritage Program for three years in the early 90s, she traveled around the islands, searching for rare plants and animals and biologically significant areas. Leaving The Conservancy to pursue graduate education, she studied the biology of the endangered 'ōpe'ape'a, or Hawaiian bat (Lasiurus cinereus semotus), which led to a thesis that earned her a MS in Zoology from the University of Hawai'i in 2001. Rejoining the Conservancy in 2002, she has served as Coordinator of Landscape Conservation Programs statewide, as Conservation Planner, and as Statewide GIS Coordinator, her current position.