Ask Callie Amoaku what she does for a living, and she’ll probably just show you her phone.
“My phone is filled with probably thousands of bumble bee photos,” she laughs. “I’ll pull it up and show people, like, look, here’s a picture of me holding a bumble bee.”
That mix of genuine delight and hard-won expertise is what makes Amoaku, BKF’s Technical Manager of Biology in Southern California, such a compelling voice on one of California’s most consequential conservation issues. Her love of the outdoors goes back to a childhood spent bouncing between Wyoming, Montana, New Hampshire, and Florida, catching tadpoles, feeding manatees from a backyard canal, and generally growing up, in her words, “playing outside, basically.”
When a Tiny Bee Becomes a Big Project Consideration
These days her focus is Crotch’s bumble bee (Bombus crotchi), a candidate species under review for listing under the California Endangered Species Act. Until a final decision is made, it carries the same legal protections as a formally listed species, which means any project that might affect it has to be evaluated carefully under CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, the state law requiring public agencies to assess and disclose a project’s environmental impacts before approving it. Skip that step, or do it poorly, and a project can stall, face legal challenges, or get denied outright.
Crotch’s bumble bee is easy to spot once you know what to look for: a big, fuzzy bee with a bold yellow band and a splash of orange near the tail. Finding its nests, though, is nearly impossible. “They’ll have tiny entrances,” Amoaku explains, “so unless you happen to randomly come across one, it’s really unlikely you’re going to find them.”
That’s where Amoaku’s role at BKF comes in, often earlier than clients expect. She’s involved early in the site selection and due diligence stage, reviewing habitat data and past observations to figure out whether a site needs a closer look. And when clients hear “endangered species” and panic, she has a simple message: “There are so many mechanisms to get them through the project that it doesn’t have to be scary.”
Bringing Biology to the Table Earlier
Instead of juggling separate sub-consultants for biology, engineering, and permitting, "now we can all be under one house ... it's much easier to manage, much easier to budget, and much more efficient for the client."
Six months into her time at BKF, Amoaku already sees the payoff of the firm’s integrated approach. Instead of juggling separate sub-consultants for biology, engineering, and permitting, she says, “now we can all be under one house … it’s much easier to manage, much easier to budget, and much more efficient for the client.”
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