Julie Etra’s erosion and sediment control approach through her company, Western Botanical Services in Reno, NV, is what she calls “reusable resource inventory.” “Import less, use more that is available locally,” she says. Etra’s standard practice is to recycle onsite materials to save native soil and native vegetation.
“During clearing and grubbing, you can chop everything up and put it back; you don’t have to buy anything,” she says. “That’s how I design a job. For instance, if you’re doing a river or wetlands restoration, is there salvageable sod? How realistic is it to salvage it?”
There’s no substitute for personal observation, she notes. “There’s a lot of cutting and pasting that goes on in a lot of firms. You can’t do the job from Google Maps. A lot of people don’t get out in the field and look at things. They always miss something.”
Etra tells clients and students that every job is site specific. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve never had the same design, not even the same seed mix,” she says.
She loves to travel and notes that in countries with fewer resources, erosion control is done “very resourcefully,” she says. “Here, we have both temporary and permanent best management practices in stormwater pollution prevention plans. You can often combine them. You don’t have to do things twice.”
What She Does Day to Day
Etra works by herself, collaborating with subcontractors as needed. She splits her time between office and field tasks. She also has an office in Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico. Each day is diverse, calling for her to perform one of many company services, including botanical surveys for rare plants and rare plant mitigation, soil analysis, erosion control and restoration designs, and training. She was recently involved in a Tahoe Yellow Cress mitigation project; the small native plant grows only on Lake Tahoe’s shores. Etra’s clients include municipalities, landscape architects, and engineering firms with projects including roadways, pipelines, transmission lines, water quality improvement efforts, and river and wetland restoration projects. Etra helps engineers and landscape architects, with little knowledge of vegetation and “soft” alternatives, understand the benefits of biotechnical engineering, which can be accomplished in a cost-effective manner.
What Led Her to This Line of Work
Etra started as a music and fine arts major at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and had to take prerequisites in biology and geology. Her interests strayed from fine arts and music and—inspired by a few “exceptional ecology professors,” she says—she did graduate work in mining reclamation. Etra initially assumed she’d stay in academia, but instead, took a job as a botanist with the US Forest Service in Lake Tahoe when work in the mining industry busted in the 1980s. She didn’t last long in the job; “It was too confining for me,” she notes. She started a native plants nursery and landscape company, obtaining a contractor’s license and doing xeriscapes. “I bid on a couple of public works jobs and decided I didn’t want to have employees and have a large company,” she says. In 1992, Etra started Western Botanical Services.
What She Likes Most About Her Job
“I love the diversity,” says Etra. “That’s what floats my boat—having different kinds of projects, not being pigeon-holed, and working with different people on different types of projects. I like the challenges. The easy ones are boring.”
Her Biggest Challenge
There are challenges in getting quality work implemented and making sure the contractor is following specifications, Etra says. She says she’s gotten pickier over the years in choosing clients. “The work won’t happen if they don’t back me. I want an open line of communication with my clients.” Etra says she also feels frustrated over the “lack of serious consideration of the discipline. It seems like we’re always trying to fix things and clean up after somebody makes an unnecessary mess. I think the agencies need to get better educated, and understand that their expectations and what’s required in their permits are not necessarily implementable.”