David Kelley, president of Kelley & Associates Environmental Sciences, Inc., in Winters, California, is a plant and soil scientist who has been involved in ecological assessment and habitat restoration for over thirty years. He picked up degrees in zoology (B.S 1970), and botany (M.S. 1974) at Texas Tech University, and plant physiology and soil science (Ph.Cand. 1977) at the University of California, Davis, on his way to starting his consulting firm in 1981 in Davis. Although he maintains that he has never had a career-track job, he has managed to spend time as a roughneck in the West Texas oilfields; teach upper division plant physiology at UCDavis; grow and export a few tons of asparagus from Peru; design and permit what was at the time the largest wetland mitigation project in the US west of the Mississippi (Kachituli Oxbow in western Yolo County); testify and provide consulting services as an expert on wetlands, soils, trees, and agricultural issues in Hong Kong, West Virginia, Hawaii, Belize, Mexico, and throughout California; and enjoy some time spent hunting and swimming across most of the US. Along the way he has served as an officer of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, the Society for Range Management, Professional Soil Scientists Association of California, the California Native Grasslands Association, and other professional organizations, and he has had the privilege and pleasure of teaching way too many short courses on soils, wetlands, and trees to resource professionals in several states. As president of Tuscan, Inc., a non-profit foundation he founded in 1991, he manages and is the principle scientist for a large vernal pool mitigation and research site in Butte County. He brings to the Board of The Restoration Trust a real and long-standing interest in the conservation and management of natural resources.