The Coastal Watershed Institute is hiring!

The Coastal Watershed Institute (CWI), invites qualified applicants to apply for The CWI/Cyd Brower Leaders in Science Fellow.

Formed in 1996 the Coastal Watershed Institute is a highly successful and place-based environmental non-profit dedicated to understanding, conserving, and restoring coastal ecosystems through scientific research. We pride ourselves in community engagement and mentoring the next generation of leaders in coastal science and management. For more information, please see our website at 

https://coastalwatershedinstitute.org/

The Coastal Watershed Institute (CWI) is made up of a small and extremely talented team of staff and collaborators that conduct important, enduring, measurable and interconnected work to conserve Pacific Northwest cold water coastal ecosystems. We identify and implement large, complex science and restoration initiatives addressing ecosystem services, conservation, and restoration of the nearshore of the northeast Pacific. This science has led to groundbreaking advances in understanding how nearshore ecosystems function; how to identify priority nearshore ecosystem functions for conservation and restoration, and how the disruption of nearshore ecosystem functions can act as a barrier for watershed ecosystem restoration. We have defined how to design and implement landscape scale nearshore ecosystem restoration, and defined the synergistic nearshore ecosystem responses to landscape restoration actions, including large-scale dam removals.

CWI has successfully achieved some of the largest nearshore ecosystem restoration projects in the Salish Sea. We have permanently restored miles of nearshore and conserved over 30 acres of coastal habitats along this critical zone of the Elwha, the home of the world’s largest dam removal to date. We have gained critical new insights on how nearshore zones of our cold ocean ecosystems work. For example, our decades of field work has revealed, for the first time, how kelp forests function for juvenile salmon and forage fish. This work is now setting the stage for collaborative work defining larger, trans boundary, functional connections of nearshore zones.

We also have developed extremely effective partnerships with local colleges to provide two-year, part-time, paid internships for the next generation of scientists and managers. Many of our interns are veterans and women. We have had over 100 interns to date.

We have a stellar reputation, including a four-star rating on Charity Navigator. Our work has been profiled in Scientific American, National Geographic, New Yorker Magazine, and Hakai magazine.

Continuing the successes from our almost 30 years of work, CWI is now leaning forward in our next set of conservation, restoration, and engagement priorities. These include expanding our understanding of cross-regional dynamics of salmon and forage fish use of kelp forests, expanding our work conserving nearshore zones for ecosystem function using water quality and quantity conservation, continuing our work defining and implementing nearshore ecosystem restoration, and integrating coastal conservation with Tribal cultural use and resources.

The Cyd Brower Fellow will be a leader in much of this forward focused work. The position is 80% time, and will include leading scientific field research and program development, implementation, and publishing, as well as contributing to science management and community engagement under the supervision of the organization’s senior scientist. Grant writing will be a must. If additional funding is secured the position may expand to include college-level teaching and travel for scientific work, engagement, and conferences.

The position requires an advanced science degree completed within the last five years, for which a PhD is preferred. The selected candidate must have successful academic and field experience in either northwest pacific coastal systems, including nearshore fish ecology and identification, and/or beaver ecology and restoration. This position is located on the Olympic Peninsula and local residency is preferred.

To apply please send a CV that highlights experience specific to the stated position focus areas along with two academic references and a recently published peer reviewed scientific publication to CWI senior scientist Dr. Anne Shaffer, anne.shaffer@coastalwatershedinstitute.org.

 CWI is a 501c3 and Washington state non-profit corporation  UBI number 601-708-612    

 P.O. Box 266, Port Angeles, WA 98362