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In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, thousands upon thousands of evacuees needed food and shelter. Through a series of personal connections, FEMA and the U.S. Forest Service turned to The Nature Conservancy to provide qualified individuals to do the job of helping to find housing for displaced persons. Seventeen Conservancy staff and volunteers that are a part of the Conservancy’s Fire Management program, which is based on the “Incident Command System,” traveled to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to assist the Forest Service and FEMA as they worked to make space to create temporary housing for the evacuees arriving daily. One of those tapped was Ryan Boggs of the Colorado Chapter.
Ryan grew up in Colorado, and is now a Project Director with the Colorado Chapter’s Purgatoire project. He has worked in many different ways for the Conservancy, starting as an intern at Phantom Canyon Preserve in Northern Colorado after receiving his B.S. in Wildlife Biology from Colorado State University. Following that he worked for worked as the Laramie Foothills Land Steward and then the Aiken Canyonlands/Chico Basin Project Director. Following his passion of fire restoration, he then transferred to The Nature Conservancy's Purgatoire project as Project Director. Ryan has worked on many issues for the Conservancy and is focused on tamarisk control, forest and fire restoration, and land protection in his current position.
His journey hundreds of miles into the southern woods of Mississippi, and the people he met there, left an indelible impression. “The woods and wetlands of Mississippi were severely affected by the hurricane”, said Boggs, “but now they are providing homes to those who lost everything.” Much of his work took place with other Conservancy people, chopping, sawing and moving brush in the quiet of the woods in Mississippi State Parks.
Then one day, when the group finished their assignment early, they found a Red Cross facility that was in need of more people to help. Boggs describes his most memorable moment as “giving people cold water to drink when they were tired and had been waiting in line all day to get relief paperwork filed.” The Conservancy workers encountered “streaming lines of cars eight miles long. The sheer numbers of people displaced at this one place was unbelievable,” said Boggs.
He reflects that while his passion still lies in protecting biodiversity, he feels privileged to have been able to “take the time to help humanity in such a direct way. It was just a great feeling.”
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