We check in with Tom Maloney, executive director of the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, just as the preserve have seen a surge in use (and abuse) from the pandemic. The swimming hole on the Ventura River preserve has particularly seen huge crowds, with trash and graffiti marring that beautiful place such that the OVLC board (full disclosure, of which the podcast host is a member) has made the agonizing decision to hire a security firm close the park to crowds, while leaving it open for recreational uses such as hiking, horseback rides and biking.

Maloney talks about his previous job, as director of Revive & Restore, which seeks to use modern technologies to save endangered species like black-footed ferrets, as well as restock populations of extinct heath hens, passenger pigeons, even wooly mammoths, as a way to save threatened habitats and fight global warming. Some of that technology is helping the fight to develop medical treatments without having to harvest blood from the threatened horseshoe crabs, an enormous operation that takes place annually at Cape May, New Jersey, in which a third of the blue blood from these migratory crabs is taken directly from their hearts. "An alien abduction of the highest order," Maloney calls it. Horseshoe crabs only exist on the east side of the continents, which some speculate might be an effect of Pangea, the supercontinent that existed before continental drift.

Born in Connecticut to a father who worked for IBM, (I've Been Moved), Maloney moved around a lot as a kid between the East Coast and California. 

Among his significant achievements, he created the massive Tejon Ranch Conservancy, of some 270,000 acres which makes it the largest private property in the state. He moved here this past Fall and has hit the ground running with his talented crew, before being interrupted by the pandemic. He's hiked around a lot to "get a sense of the land and the light." Friends with famed birder Jesse Grantham, who tipped him off that this job was available, Maloney has fallen in love with the Ojai Valley's distinct habitats and tremendous natural beauty. We talk about the role of the conservancy, not only in preserving that beauty, but partnering with state agencies for various projects in what is meant to be an interlocking web of mutual benefit.

Another exciting project is being parented by the CREW and partnered with other local groups, including the OVLC. It's called the Dicotyledon Fund, worth $100,000 a year for as long as 20 years, and is meant to get young people working on improving the habitat and ecology of Ojai. He also says the OVLC is looking to accelerate its land acquisitions.

We don't talk about tenkara fishing, Bruce Chatwin travelogues or Dick Gregory's comedy.