Junko Hoshi, Ph.D., Climate Science and Renewable Energy Branch, California Department of Fish

and Wildlife

Junko’s passions for conservation has a long history, and it goes back to her very first memory

gorging on wild raspberries in a secondary forest in Tokyo near her home. She was about three

years old and urban sprawl was approaching fast to the area. She had no idea at the time that in

two years, such natural playgrounds would be lost except for those protected under the city’s

long-term landscape plan. Somehow this experience, the exhausted joys followed by the

complete loss of the landscape, became a part of her archetypal memory that eventually led to

her career change in the field of conservation after working as a theoretical mathematician and

algorithm designer at Seagate Technology.

As a regional conservation planner at California Department of Fish and Wildlife for the past ten

years, she has worked together to prioritize conservation actions for diverse species and

ecosystems in the state, national and international level. Her engagement includes Natural

Community Conservation Plans, especially the Bay Delta Conservation Plan and Desert

Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, and as a lead and author, the California State Wildlife

Action Plan 2015 Updates and the companion plans, including the agriculture companion plan.

She has fostered partner engagement for conservation including through CA Biodiversity

Council, CA Strategic Growth Council, Landscape Conservation Cooperatives and Association of

Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

Junko is a master gardener and certified herbalist. If not in meetings or in front of computer, you

would probably find her harvesting seeds, stems and roots to eat and to propagate.