RCL lunch Meeting – Dr Chris Puttock and Terrell Erikson

Booking link here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/rotarycluboflondon2/2246766

Dr Chris Puttock and Terrell Erikson will be our speakers

 Dr Chris Puttock

As a research scientist Chris has more than five decades of experience in environmental conservation, preservation, and restoration. He has a doctorate in systematic botany, describing new species of flowering plants and algae, creating habitat restoration databases, and a prize-winning book on wetlands. He spent 15 years working in mangrove restoration.

Chris was one of the Environmental Sustainability Action Group ESRAG’s 25 501(c)(4) Founding Directors in 2015. He was ESRAG’s first Executive Director from 2015-2019. He was Chair-elect for 2018-2019 and Director of the Administration & Governance Division, Chair for two years, 2019-2021, then finishing his six-year term on the Board as Immediate Past Chair and the Director of Projects Division. Since then Chris has been ESRAG Senior Strategic Advisor. Under his tenure as Chair, ESRAG grew from fewer than 250 members to more than 1450, with 12 Regional Chapters.

From 2021-2023 Chris was Chair-elect and now Chair 2023-2026 of the Advisory Board of the 26 Rotary Action Groups. Chris has been working with the RAGs to recognize the synergies between them.

Chris is now in his third year as Chair of the Rotary Action Group for Endangered Species (RAGES). He has a passion to prevent the demise of ecological services by human exploitation, reaching past the tipping point where nature is not permanently damaged.

 Terrell Ann Erickson

Terrell has been back in Hawai‘i since March 2022, after a productive 30-year career in conservation with the federal government and a recent one-and-a-half-year stint with private consulting in Hawai‘i.

She is now retired from making money and volunteering instead. She is Vice President of the Friends of Oahu National Wildlife Refuges, conducting bird tours in season and restoring native forests and wetlands. She joined Rotary in 2023 and is a proud member of the Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu, Hawaii (District 5000). She also is a leading member of the Rotary Action Group for Endangered Species, member of the Rotary Action Group for Water and Sanitation and Community Action for Freshwater. She volunteers her expertise on wetlands and stream restoration projects as advisor as needed.

Terrell worked in state government and the state legislature before beginning her 30-year federal career with the U.S.Navy (Guam), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Hawaii), and then the 11,000 people-strong USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). NRCS is a field-based organization promoting conservation planning on private lands (75% of the United States land-base). She enjoyed 9 years in Hawaii as State Biologist in Hawaii, and 14 years in Washington D.C. as National Biologist, Senior Executive Service Director of Science, and lastly Regional Conservationist for the Northeast Region of the U.S. (14 states). In D.C., she was for 5 years a Board member of the Washington Academy of Sciences (WAS) and President of WAS for two years.

A native of Missoula, Montana, Erickson holds bachelor’s and master’s Degrees from University of Washington and Evergreen State College in Political Science and Environmental Science (limnology emphasis) and graduated with a Senior Executive Service Certificate from the leadership school at American University in Washington, D.C. Terrell and her husband, Christopher Puttock live in Kailua, Hawaii with their four cats.