Six seek five Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust seats

Six candidates will seek five director seats tonight on the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust board.

Balloting begins at 7, but the candidates will make a brief statement about their credentials before votes are cast.

Their profiles, posted on the Land Trust's website, are featured below.

Stephanie Loftin
Stephanie is an attorney admitted to the California bar, and in 1997 was named Pro Bono lawyer of the year for this area. After settling in Long Beach, Stephanie was in the first graduating class of the Long Beach Citizens Police Academy. Since that time, she has been involved in many local issues. Stephanie has taught battered women at Rainbow Services in San Pedro how to legally protect themselves and their children; she has mediated disputes between neighbors and has worked with the Long Beach Police Chief's task force to ensure fairness to gays and lesbians.

Phil Lohman, Ph.D., MBA
Phil is a learning and development consultant for Kaiser Permanente and was, for more than 20 years, a management consultant and executive with a multinational consulting firm. In his other life, Phil has been a lifelong outdoorsman and environmental activist, beginning with the Sierra Club's campaign to save Mineral King in 1969. He has served the Sierra Club as a public speaker, was one of the founders of Long Beach Cyclists and, as a rescue-certified Scuba diver, has participated in REEF and other oceanconservation projects. He is a member of El Dorado Audubon and has been an activist and supporter of the Los Cerritos Wetlands since the late 1980s. Phil was a board member of the LCWLT in the early 1990s.

Steve McCord
Steve was instrumental, in partnership with Eric White, in redesigning the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust website, which was launched in September 2005. Steve has lived adjacent to the Los Cerritos Wetlands since 2003 and has been a Long Beach resident since 1983 (except for a four-year residence in Lakewood from 1988-1992).
Steve and his wife Angie helped rally opposition to the proposed Home Depot on Studebaker by preparing and distributing letters to all the residents of the Belmont Shores Mobile Estates community as well as the legislature. Steve has been an El Dorado Nature Center volunteer since 2005 and has participated in the Discovering a Sense of Place, Choices for Sustainable Living, Exploring Deep Ecology and Menu for the Future reading circles. For many years Steve has been a supporter of The Nature Conservancy of California, the Trust for Public Land, Northwest Earth Institute, League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund, California Wilderness Coalition, Corporate Accountability International, Water-keepers Alliance, and the Tree People.

Jericho Poppler
Jericho has been a Long Beach resident her whole life. She lives with her husband and five children in the Naples area. Jericho is a former world champion surfer, one of the original founders of Surfrider Foundation and a long-time advocate for environmental causes, especially coastal protection. In addition to her passion for protecting the environment, Jericho is an advocate for kids and founded "Kids for Clean Waves" to help raise awareness in children, their parents, and the general public of the importance of ocean water cleanliness off our coast. Jericho is currently an LCWLT Board member.

Janice Dahl
Was a founding member of Los Cerritos Wetlands Task Force in 1995 and a founding member of Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust. She organized and hosted community outreach for public awareness and Los Cerritos Wetlands purchase, protection and restoration. In 1999, Janice created and produced the award winning video The Lost Jewel of Coast, Los Cerritos Wetlands, which has been used extensively to educate lawmakers and continues to be used in schools and colleges. She and others successfully stopped the city from allowing the Bixby Company to dump illegally on the open-space property adjacent to Belmont Shores Mobile Estates. In 2002, she was instrumental, along with Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust founder Don May, in securing $14,000,000 from the State of California for the purchase of Los Cerritos Wetlands. In 2004 Janice created the Stop Home Depot campaign, organized the community and collected hundreds of signatures to keep Home Depot from being built across from the wetlands. Janice was the original plaintiff that retained the law firm of Chatten-Brown and Carstens and filed suit to fight the City of Long Beach, Studebaker LLC (Tom Dean, et al) and Home Depot. This led to her becoming President of University Park Estates Neighborhood Assn. (UPENA) for two terms (four years). She brought UPENA and Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust together to sign onto the lawsuit to stop Home Depot, and in 2008 these organizations won the suit. Janice ran fundraising campaigns to help pay for legal costs. She states that in 2010 she will continue her efforts supporting the acquisition, protection and restoration of Los Cerritos Wetlands.

Tom Marchese
Tom Marchese is a product of Long Beach-he grew up in a neighborhood adjacent to the wetlands-he attended Hill, Wilson, Cal State, and Western State University College of Law.
Currently serving as director on the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust Board as well as serving as Vice President on the University Park Estates Board, Tom has been a steward of wetlands for over 30 years. He was a member of the SEADIP study group (alternating with Janice Dahl). His concerns and actions regarding the wetlands have resulted in stopping Home Depot, exposing the City's land swap "deal" with his public records request, and he has always been a vigilant observer in protection of our wetlands. Tom is a supporter of SEADIP, the California Coastal Commission, the League of Conservation Voters, the Trust of Public Land, the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy as well as many other environmental groups. Tom is "watchdog" for the environment, not a "lapdog" for unfettered