WHO ARE WE?
Meet Our Team
(PhD, Botany) serves pro bono as the Director of Project Eleven Hundred. For 40 years Mary has worked within environmental organizations on pesticide reform, environmental law, and conservation-based public lands management. Her masters and doctorate in Botany were pollination studies in the San Bernardino National Forest of southern California.
Mary O'Brien
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR • UTAH
Looking back, I think I have known about native bees since an early age spending summers at Lake Tahoe and then broadening my knowledge through college and career. But my real fascination with bees began in earnest in 2002, after retiring from my career as a consulting soils/watershed scientist in the Northern Rockies, when I moved to SE Utah and began gardening. I am fascinated by the bees and other pollinators that visit. I was further inspired by reading The Forgotten Pollinators by Stephen Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan and then, of course, by Mary O’Brien’s expertise, enthusiasm, and vision for Project 1100.
_JPG.jpg)
Pamala Hackley
PRESIDENT • UTAH
Utah Navajo Eirene Nakai Hamilton is a continuous San Juan River valley resident. She has retired from 30 years of teaching, most of those years teaching her first language: Diné Bizaad, Navajo. Now, she devotes time to writing, gardening, ethno-botany and artistic ventures.
Eirene Hamilton
UTAH
Bruce is retired, after field work for the World Health Organization, the Forest Service, several environmental groups, and then teaching high school science for three decades. Like most Americans, he deeply appreciate the beauty and diversity of our landscape, in particular the Colorado Plateau, and seek to support efforts to protect the health of these public lands.
Bruce Hoeft
WASHINGTON
Thomas is a conservation advocate, ecologist, and composer currently based in Bozeman, Montana. In 2019 and 2020, Thomas helped launch the Project 1100 campaign to protect native bees and end public lands apiary permitting on the Colorado Plateau as a fellow with the Grand Canyon Trust. A graduate of Whitman College, Thomas has surveyed birds, plants, and pollinators as a field technician across the western/central U.S. and Costa Rica, and is now pursuing his Master's in ecology and pollinator conservation at Montana State University.
Thomas Meinzen
TREASURER • MONTANA
Monica has extensive experience with non-profit environmental and social justice organizations, and several community and family foundations. She has served as a member or advisor to the boards of many local, national, and international groups. Monica earned her BS in Political Economy of Natural Resources and MS in Wildlands Resource Science at UC Berkeley, and has published on pesticide reform and integrated pest management, environmental health, and food justice issues. She is excited to be a part of P1100, to help protect and praise native bees and their habitats, and the dedicated board of directors.
Monica Moore
CALIFORNIA
Ellie has worked in the non-profit sector for the past nine years, at organizations with missions from youth workforce development to health education. In 2018 she began working for organizations with an environmental focus to better fit her passion for the natural world, and she is thrilled to hone in on environmental science and advocacy as a part of Project Eleven Hundred.
Ellie Stevenson
SECRETARY • ARIZONA
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF BEYOND TOXIC
OREGON
Lisa Arkin, Executie Director of Beyond Toxics since 2006, has expanded Project Eleven Hundred past its Colorado Plateau home base to include Oregon. Beyond Toxics is a statewide environmental justice organization with clean air, clean water, and safe places to lives for all, including native bees.
Lisa Arkin
PROGRAM ASSOCIATE
Ellie Stevenson, Secretary of our Board of Directors (see above), is now also serving as our 2023 Program Associate. In this staff role, Ellie will extend our communications regarding the threats posed to native bees by honey bee apiary permitting to BLM and Forest Service managers in New Mexico and California. Ellie first joined Project Eleven Hundred in 2021 as a Pollinator Intern, reviewing 88 research studies on the effects of honey bee hives on native bees, and helping to expand and maintain our database. We’re grateful that Ellie is once again applying her pollination biology knowledge and skills in the service of native bees.
Ellie Stevenson
Thank You
Rachel Ruckman and Diego Velasquez!
For two years as Project Eleven Hundred Data Assistant, Rachel has assembled and managed our complex and shifting database of (1) Threatened, Endangered, and Sensitive (TES) plant and bee species, and (2) contacts and communications with large numbers of BLM and Forest Service managers. Rachel’s attention to detail has been essential as we learned where apiaries are permitted, who is permitting them, and when permits are expiring.
Throughout 2022, Research Assistant Diego assembled information on which TES plant species on BLM and FS lands with expiring honey bee apiary permits are pollinated by bees and when their flowers are open for pollination on those. His attractive phenology charts and accessible pollinator documents have been used to encourage BLM and FS managers to undertake environmental assessments before considering renewal of the permits.
We are grateful for the Project Eleven Hundred contributions they have made and support them as they move to new commitments.
We can't do it alone.
The Project Eleven Team also benefits from the help of scientists, students, volunteers, and other conservation organizations!
We are grateful for the support of foundations and donors who made possible the establishment of Project Eleven Hundred and who continue support for its work!
Organizations to whom Project Eleven Hundred is grateful for information and collaboration include (but not limited to):
