Our Mission:
The Upper Gila Watershed Alliance is a non-profit watershed protection and conservation organization working to promote the long-term health of the Upper Gila Watershed and its communities of life. Through advocacy, education, research and restoration projects, we are striving to build communities of stewards in more locally based economies.
Our Staff
Donna Stevens
Donna has been with UGWA since 2003, and became the Executive Director in 2009. An amateur botanist, she is the co-author, with Jack and Martha Carter, of Common Southwestern Native Plants: An Identification Guide, now in its third edition. A native of Chicago, she has lived in Grant County since 1987, and has a deep love for the Gila River and Gila National Forest. In her spare time, she likes to hike, read, and hang out with her family.
Carol Ann Fugagli
Carol Ann has lived in the Silver City area with her family for over 20 years. She’s worked for UGWA since 2013 and is an ornithologist. She trained with former Vice President Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader and has a passion for teaching the science of climate change and the opportunities it brings to our youth. She enjoys contra dancing, hiking, and photographing birds.
Board of Directors
Sarah Johnson
Sarah Johnson has lived in the Cliff-Gila Valley since early 2000. From 2001-2004 she was UGWA's administrative coordinator. Currently she works as a freelance editor, page compositor, and graphic designer.
Tom Krohley
Raised in New York, Tom served in the Marine Corps before his career in investment banking, in the U.S. and abroad. He and his wife Esperanza moved from Connecticut to the Burro Mountains in 2001 where Tom, a volunteer firefighter, enjoys hiking, reading and being a gardener's helper.
Ron Parry
Ron grew up in Los Angeles, attended Occidental College in Eagle Rock, CA, and graduate school in Chemistry at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, followed by two years of postdoctoral work in the U.K. After an additional year of postdoctoral work at Stanford University, he moved back to Brandeis as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry until 1978, when he moved to Rice University in Houston. He remained at Rice until 2012 and retired as an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry. His interests include classical music, environmental literature, botany, Lepidoptera, and hiking.
Sharman Apt Russell
Sharman Apt Russell's nonfiction Diary of a Citizen Scientist (Oregon State University Press, 2014) won the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, whose recipients include Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. Sharman celebrates citizen science in the Gila Valley where she teaches writing at Western New Mexico University, Silver City, NM as well as Antioch University in Los Angeles, CA. Her dozen published books have been translated into a dozen languages and her awards include a Rockefeller Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, and the Writers at Work Award. Her eco-fiction includes the young adult Teresa of the New World (Yucca Publishing, 2015) and the science fiction Knocking on Heaven’s Door (Yucca Publishing, 2016). For more information, go to www.sharmanaptrussell.com.
Dennis Weller
Dennis has been an engineer, scientist, photographer, and sculptor; and now he is an environmentalist. His hope is simple: that the Gila River will remain as it is.