Johanna Kisner, M.E.S.M. 
   President and Principal Ecologist

Ms. Johanna Kisner’s combined education and over seventeen years of professional experience provide a wide range of expertise in ecology, biological resource assessment, and habitat restoration in central and southern California. Ms. Kisner has fifteen years of professional experience in habitat restoration planning, permitting, design, implementation, and monitoring primarily in the Santa Barbara Region as well as Ventura, Los Angeles, Kern, and Riverside Counties.

Ms. Kisner has been the project manager/lead for several successful multi-million dollar habitat restoration projects. She is a well-rounded biologist with strong botanical and wildlife survey skills and can identify central and southern California birds by sight, song, and call. She holds a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recovery permit (TE204436-1) for tidewater gobies (Eucyclogobius newberryi; TWG) and California red-legged frogs (Rana draytonii; CRLF).

She has extensive experience with surveys for special-status species, habitat assessment, wetland delineation and related permitting, and construction compliance and monitoring. She has managed and coordinated complex biological resource sections for several CEQA/NEPA documents. She has assisted clients with obtaining and complying with regulatory permits for agencies such as National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), USFWS, CDFW, California Coastal Commission, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Regional Water Quality Control Board and has good working relationships with these agencies locally.

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David Kisner, M.S.
   Principal Ecologist 

Mr. David Kisner is a Certified Wildlife Biologist and has been working as an ecologist on biological assessment, habitat restoration, environmental compliance monitoring, and conservation projects within central and southern California since 1993. Mr. Kisner has lead biological sections of numerous CEQA/NEPA projects. His areas of expertise include evaluating impacts to special status species and habitats, developing mitigation and monitoring plans, and acquiring project approvals from state and federal resource agencies.

Mr. Kisner has over 20 years of experience identifying birds by sight, song, and call. He has worked with numerous listed species including least Bell’s vireo, southwestern willow flycatcher, snowy plover, least tern, Belding’s savannah sparrow, Swainson’s hawk, and yellow billed cuckoo.  He has spent untold hours conducting species specific surveys and general nest searches and monitoring.  He is a level 2 blunt-nosed leopard lizard surveyor, and experienced desert tortoise and red-legged frog biologist.

Mr. Kisner is also a well-rounded botanist having conducted surveys for listed and rare plant species, general habitat assessments, and vegetation sampling for habitat restoration projects. Mr. Kisner completed his Master’s in Ecology examining the impacts of the non-native giant reed (Arundo donax) on the riparian bird community. Mr. Kisner has managed the biology portion of several environmental documents under California Energy Commission purview, numerous soil remediation and restoration projects, construction monitoring, and permit compliance efforts. Mr. Kisner has also given biological presentations to County Supervisors and Commissioners, construction workers, colleagues, agency personnel, college students, and the general public.