Remembering Joan Lamphier ~ Project Coyote Advisory Board Member (2013-2022)
By Camilla Fox
It was with deep sadness that we learned of Project Coyote Advisory Board (AB) member Joan Lamphier’s passing in late November.
Joan served on Project Coyote’s AB for close to a decade, bringing a suite of skills and experience to the organization. Joan was an urban planner specializing in environmental review in Northern California and a founding principal of Lamphier-Gregory– a consulting firm that specialized in planning and implementing the California Environmental Quality Act. Her work, in over 80 California jurisdictions, involved the environmental review of major infrastructure projects that included dams, refineries, pipelines, transmission lines, and corporate complexes. As a result of that work, she had extensive knowledge of habitats and rare and endangered species.
After leaving the firm to the next generation in 2010, she established a solo practice. In addition to serving on Project Coyote’s Advisory Board, Joan was also involved with several environmental organizations as a long-term volunteer, including the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (Hawkwatch), Farallones Marine Sanctuary (Beach Watch), Point Reyes National Seashore (Seals, Tule Elk Docent), Marin Agricultural Land Trust and Audubon Canyon Ranch (Heron Nesting Survey). These long-term commitments provided the opportunity to contribute to long-term data monitoring of specific species.
I first met Joan at a dinner with Marin-based conservationists that included local luminaries like Dr. Marty Griffin (who also joined Project Coyote as an Ambassador). I was invited to share Project Coyote’s work for wildlife locally and across the country. After dinner, Joan approached me about volunteering her time and talents to Project Coyote. She joined our advisory board, helped with our public education and outreach, and advised me personally as I grew Project Coyote – offering her expertise and experience in development, strategic planning and nonprofit management.
We would meet on a regular basis at Emporio Rulli in downtown Larkspur where we would enjoy a latte and go through our agenda. Through those meetings, I came to know Joan on a personal level, and I always appreciated her sharing of her life experiences and deep appreciation for birds, coyotes, and wild spaces and places. We bonded over our shared love of wild nature and she joined a Project Coyote outing to Yellowstone National Park where I saw Joan’s passion, and joie de vivre come to life in Yellowstone’s famed Lamar Valley as we watched wolves, grizzly bears, coyotes, eagles and ravens taking their turns over an elk carcass.
We also bonded over our love of books and poetry and frequently shared favorite poems from Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and Elizabeth Bishop among others.
I have a fond memory of visiting Joan at her beautiful cottage in Stinson Beach, where she lived with her beloved kitty. She took great pride in sharing her exquisite rose gardens with me – naming each rose, its history, and how she came to adore roses with her late husband, Bob. She shared her deep grief in losing her husband and the solace that she found in the ocean waves at Stinson, the birds who visited her yard, the peace and quiet of her garden, and the comfort and devotion of her cat. She opined at the negative attitudes toward coyotes she saw in some of her neighbors who posted fear mongering messages on Nextdoor and she worked to correct the misinformation and quell their concerns. Together, we posted signs and went door-to-door with Project Coyote’s Living with Coyotes factsheets throughout her neighborhood. Overtime she shared that she saw a shift in attitudes and brought some of her neighbors into Project Coyote’s fold. Some of these neighbors joined our 10-year gala, which Joan helped organize at the Durell Vineyard in Sonoma in 2019. I will never forget her smile after she had a sip of their featured Dunstan pinot noir. She liked and appreciated fine wine.
My last memory of Joan was at Emporio Rulli in Larkspur in the spring of 2022 where we discussed Project Coyote’s strategic plan and expansion into the Midwest and Northeast. At the end of our meeting she asked me about my personal life having come to know some of my trials and tribulations over the years. I shared with her that I had found my soulmate – the word she always used to describe her Bob. She hugged me and said: don’t ever let go and know how rare that is to find.
Those words have stuck with me – as has Joan’s beautiful spirit, and smile when she was lit with the fire of all that impassioned her. Rest in Peace, Joan Lamphier. You will be missed by many- and remembered by all who had the privilege of knowing you. The last poem we shared together…
The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.