Brings Decades of Grassroots Experience to Position
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 30, 2016
Gaithersburg, MD – The Izaak Walton League of America has hired Danielle Donkersloot as the organization’s new Clean Water Program Director. Donkersloot will lead the League’s work to empower citizens to solve conservation challenges where they live and expand the scope and impact of citizen science through water monitoring nationwide.
“Danielle brings a wealth of program development and grassroots experience to the League,” says Scott Kovarovics, Executive Director of the Izaak Walton League. “She can immediately engage water quality monitoring volunteers, deliver hands-on environmental education, and support policy advocacy on water-related issues. We’re excited to have her join our team.”
Donkersloot has worked in the conservation field for more than 20 years, with a focus on volunteer stream monitoring for the last 16 years. Most recently, she served as the Volunteer Monitoring Program Director for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), where she launched a statewide citizen stream monitoring program. She created a quality assurance program that led to a 20-percent increase in the state’s use of volunteer-collected stream monitoring data. Donkersloot is also an active member of the National Water Monitoring Council, where she represents the volunteer water monitoring community on a national scale. She has a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey (now Stockton University).
“We can’t fix water quality problems we don’t know about,” says Donkersloot. “The Izaak Walton League helped to pioneer volunteer water monitoring in the 1970s, and these efforts are just as critical today. I am thrilled to join the League and look forward to engaging our members and volunteers across the country in citizen-based stream monitoring. In the digital world we live in today, it’s so important for people to get outside to enjoy the natural world and work toward defending our waterways.”
###
Founded in 1922, the Izaak Walton League of America (www.iwla.org) protects America's outdoors through education, community-based conservation, and promoting outdoor recreation.
Contact:
Dawn Merritt, Communications Director
Izaak Walton League of America