by B. Vlamis

Barb Castro on Mother’s Day 2022. She shared this photo with one of her valuable medical updates she would e-mail many friends.

A lovely spirit, sweet friend, dedicated colleague, and environmentalist took flight on December 4, 2022 in Chico. Barbara Castro’s tenacious attempts to beat back cancer once again, reached an end with family and friends around her. I knew Barb first as a colleague who was part of the vernal pool committee formed in the early 2000s. She worked for the Red Bluff office of the California Department of Water Resources, at the time, using her botanical skills and education. Barb brought an unequaled enthusiasm to every meeting, field trip, conference, and stroll.

She was an instrumental part of four vernal pool conferences held in Sierra Nevada Brewing Company’s Big Room and the field trips that followed. Barb and Rob Schlising’s 2018 conference presentation, The Vernal Pool Landscape At The Nature Conservancy’s Vina Plans Preserve, was a marvelous history of the work done at The Nature Conservancy’s Vina Plains Preserve over 35 years.

Our vernal pool committee was later named the vernal pool landscapes committee, which then added a Vernal Pool Recovery Implementation Working Group designation to its tasks and planning. Barb took this new responsibility to heart and brought her GIS skills to the discussion about preserving valuable vernal pool landscapes.

In March 2022, Barb and I took a vernal pool field trip. She was juggling health challenges, but we both were determined to make our trip happen. We wandered around Stilson Canyon Road looking for late signs of Butte County meadowfoam, which we found. It was such a dry and warm start to 2022 that plants came and went quickly. We looked at the Schmidbauer land in southeast Chico from the fence, also home to BCM, and discussed the planned litigation to protect the habitat and species there. It was a treasured time.

I am grateful for the many ways that Barb and I shared time together. What a joy and a privilege.

I love this photo of the vernal pool conference team in 2006 at the Vina preserve. Happy times and a job well done. From L to R: Barb Castro, Rob Schlising, Doug Alexander, Betty Warne, Jenny Marr, Joe Silveira, and Barbara Vlamis