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About Us
Research Ranch Advisory Team

Betsy Kunzer: Way back in the 1960’s I majored in botany and zoology. I did graduate work in physiological ecology but never worked professionally in my field.

I worked professionally as a cancer research assistant, as a secondary school science teacher, and as a physical scientist in engineering testing of rock and soil and environmental site assessment for the Bureau of Reclamation in Denver. During my time in Denver, I was secretary for 3 different sections in ASTM (American Society of Testing Materials), helped author 3 new standards, and was on a taskforce developing and testing a set of standardized soils. With my husband, Sandy, I developed a soil identification short course on field classification of soil for Bureau field staff. I also served 7 years as recording secretary on the board of our mountain condo.

I have done nature photography since 1964 and 3 years ago we went digital so I am fairly conversant with the basic photo editing software. We have given scripted slide presentations of our photos to various groups since 1970.

I have been birding since I married a birder in 1969 and would describe myself as an interested but not dedicated birder with a current life list of 865 species. I have been trying to identify plants since 1964. I started doing wildlife bronze sculpture in 1988 but have not been working at it lately.

My husband Sandy and I retired to Sierra Vista in 2001 and became involved as volunteers with the various local nature organizations. I currently volunteer time at The Nature Conservancy’s Ramsey Canyon Preserve by co-leading nature walks, filling in as greeter or bookstore person, pulling invasive plants, picking up trash, helping with thinning and clearing up thinned wood, and anything else that comes along. I also help with the Hummingbird Monitoring Network’s hummingbird banding at Ramsey. I am on the Ramsey Canyon Volunteer Advisory Board and head the Events Committee. I am a volunteer at Coronado National Memorial, helping with their 4th grade education program and with various resource management studies including rodent trapping and agave counts. I am also a volunteer at the Audubon Research Ranch helping with well monitoring and grassland studies. We volunteer with the BLM for the annual June river flow monitoring of the San Pedro River. For the last 4 years, we have organized the teams and taught the pre-river monitoring classes for this effort.

I am reasonably computer literate and can work with Word, Wordperfect, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Adobe Elements 4.0, iPhoto 6, slide and photo scanning, and web searches. I am comfortable designing test protocols, gathering, entering and checking data, writing procedures and editing reports.

I will admit that as I get older, my tolerance for long meetings diminishes. I reserve the right to take off for as much as a month at a time to go someplace like New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland, Alaska, Galapagos, Patagonia, etc. but otherwise would be proud to serve the Research Ranch.