My Watermark is Lake Ontario in Upstate New York.

I work for the Nature Conservancy and I’m based in Rochester, New York.

My earliest connection was through birds. I’ve been watching birds since I was eight years old. The Great Lakes play a huge role in bird migration.

I was one of many participants in the IJC’s process that sought to come up with a new regulation plan for Lake Ontario, called Plan 2014. Plan 2014 will restore 64,000 acres of coastal wetlands. It will allow the water level to occasionally go low, when it was natural to do so. That’s when shorelines rebuild. That’s been the missing ingredient for decades.