2024 Fellows

Jason Clinch

Jason Clinch grew up on a rural farm outside of Castle Rock, Washington in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. He caught his first fish from a boat on Spirit Lake with his grandparents while camping at age three, then watched the mountain erupt at age five. From an early age, he spent his time camping, skiing, hiking, riding dirt bikes, and fishing whenever he could until graduating from Castle Rock in 1992. He attended Clark College in Vancouver, Washington for two years, followed by Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.

It was at Linfield that Jason met Professor Kareen Sturgeon (NPSO Fellow, 2013), who nurtured his interest in biology and in particular botany, ecology, and evolution. He quickly took every class she offered and even attended the required systematic botany field trip to the Alvord Desert twice! He eventually earned his bachelor of science in biology with minor degrees in environmental studies and chemistry in 1997. While at Linfield, he interned for the Yamhill Basin Watershed Council and Natural Resources Conservation Service mapping riparian vegetation as part of a larger watershed analysis.

During one summer of his time at Linfield, Jason worked as a natural resource technician for the Washington Department of Natural Resources cruising timber and laying out sale units and roads with just a compass, clinometer, and chain. It was there that he began to fully realize he needed a job where he was outdoors as often as possible. Following graduation from Linfield, Jason moved to southern Oregon to work for the Bureau of Land Management as a biological technician conducting stream surveys in the Applegate Valley for a season. His botany skills were certainly put to the test there as the only member of his crew with any botanical studies and background while cutting his teeth in some of the most diverse vegetation communities in Oregon.

Following the field season, Jason took a job at Oregon Health and Science University in a pathology lab. After several years, Jason yearned for another outdoor job and started taking graduate classes at Portland State University to round out his biology degree and learn about wetland science, delineation, and restoration. He began volunteering with Metro as a naturalist at their parks and greenspaces teaching children about the environment, ecology, wildlife, and, of course, plants. It was around this time he joined the NPSO. He eventually landed another seasonal job, this time with the Gifford Pinchot National Forest as biological technician with a focus on surveying and vouchering rare lichens, bryophytes, and fungi that may be associated with old-growth forests.

The following field season, Jason began doing contract field work for a variety of botanical and wildlife projects on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands across southwest Washington and western Oregon. Of particular note, he worked for two-years leading surveys across some of the most pristine forests in Oregon for the purpose of better understanding the range and habitat requirements of many rare lichens and bryophytes. Hundreds of the specimens he collected are held in the Oregon State University and University of Washington Herbariums.

Jason eventually landed a job as a wetland biologist for a small consulting firm where he worked for nearly twenty years on a multitude of wetland-related projects conducting delineations and permitting development projects across the state of Oregon. Many of these projects involved rare plant surveys, mitigation projects, and/or habitat restoration projects from the subalpine meadows of Mount Hood to the wet prairies of the Willamette Valley, and down south to the vernal pools in the Agate Desert of southern Oregon. During this time, he was part of the Agate Desert Vernal Pool Working Group coordinated by several agencies and interest groups and gave input and consultation on vernal pool habitat assessment, mitigation, and restoration techniques. He’s worked on several large vernal pool mitigation and/or restoration projects that involved successful reintroductions of endangered species.

Jason has been a NPSO member since 2001 but became more active with the Portland Chapter around 2011 when he began sitting in on chapter board meetings and offering to assist and/or lead hikes. He became a Rare Care volunteer for the University of Washington at that time which involved relocating rare plant populations in Washington on various public lands and reporting on their status. By 2012, he had joined forces with Erin Gray to start a similar rare plant monitoring effort in Oregon called Citizen’s Rare Plant Watch, which at that time, was solely a NPSO volunteer led initiative. Jason led efforts for and recruited folks from the Portland Chapter to relocate rare plant populations in the Portland-Metro area, Columbia River Gorge, and out to the Coast Range. After Erin moved away in 2013, he championed these efforts mostly on his own until 2016 when he fully handed the project off to Portland State University and the Rae Selling Berry Seed Bank and Plant Conservation Program housed there.

Jason continues to volunteer for and champion Citizen’s Rare Plant Watch on behalf of NPSO as the Rare and Endangered Plants Committee Chair, a role he took on in 2015. He has led rare plant monitoring trainings and works with the program coordinator, Kris Freitag, often in developing outings and with general consulting on projects. Jason has also served as a State Director-at-Large (2019-2021 and 2023-2025), is an original initiator to the development of a new website for NPSO (and on the current website working group), and is an ongoing proponent to the modernization of the organization (and on the organizational development working group). He’s been a key contributor in the recent successful petitions and letters requesting more funding for the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Plant Conservation Program and regularly sits in stakeholder meetings with them as a representative of NPSO.

Jason is always happy to help out on field trips he attends whether that is local chapter events or Annual Meetings and has been involved in creating and contributing to plants lists and/or inventories of various natural areas he’s visited around the state. Leading up to the 2018 Annual Meeting in Prineville, Oregon, he served on the Portland Chapter organizational committee for the meeting. As recognition for his past service and contributions, the Portland Chapter recognized him as Volunteer of the Year in 2019, a first for the chapter.

Lastly, Jason would like to forever extend gratitude to those fellow NPSO members he’s had the opportunity to cross paths with both past and present, all who have contributed to his personal growth and education, and provided inspiration to him in some way. Besides Kareen Sturgeon, he would like to extend specific thanks and appreciation to Roger Brewer, Paul Slichter, Susan Saul, Dan Luoma, Willow Elliott, Thea Jaster, and Kris Freitag not only for their long commitments to our organization but to Jason on multiple levels. - Willow Elliott, Portland Chapter