1988 California State Fellow Now Vice Pres. of Mitigation Banking LLC

Craig Denisoff

Craig Denisoff, a California Sea Grant State Fellow in 1988.
Photo courtesy Westervelt Ecological Services

February 2007 – California Sea Grant’s first State Fellow, Craig Denisoff, has become a leading authority and proponent of a conservation and land-use planning tool known as “mitigation banking.”

He is vice president of Westervelt Ecological Services LLC in Sacramento, a subsidiary of Alabama-based lumber and land developer The Westervelt Co. that provides private landowners, local governments and land trusts with a mechanism for building in areas that may have sensitive habitats such as wetlands.

“Instead of buying land to build houses, we buy land to build habitat mitigation banks,” Denisoff said, explaining the basic business model of his company. These areas are set aside for restoration or conservation. Businesses buy into the “bank” as compensation for habitat loss or destruction from building or other activities.

Denisoff, who earned a master’s in public administration, environmental planning and policy from San Francisco State University in 1988 and was a California Sea Grant State Fellow that year with the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, is also president of the National Mitigation Banking Association, an organization that promotes legislation and regulatory practices that encourage the use of mitigation banking.

Before entering the private sector in 1999, he worked for more than 13 years in government resource management. Among his impressive list of activities, he was a commissioner on the California Coastal Commission and San Francisco Bay Development and Conservation Commission. He was also assistant secretary for the California Resources Agency from 1994 to 1998 under Secretary Douglas Wheeler.

He attributes much of his success – and job satisfaction – to the California Sea Grant State Fellowship.

“As the first State Fellow, I cannot express enough what a great experience and opportunity it was for me, and what a major role it shaped in my career path of connecting economics and the environment,” he said.

“When the fellowship came up, I was just getting my degree and was interested in linking economics and the environment, but I really did not have any venue to go to,” he said. “With the fellowship, here was a situation that allowed me to go to the Legislature and see all the various activities that were going on and where I could best bring my talents into practice.”