Jen Hemmert is the current CDFW Wild Trout
Biologist for Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. She works under the
Heritage and Wild Trout Program (HWTP) based out of Fisheries Branch in
Sacramento and works on projects to access and manage
the trout populations of forested streams within these counties. She
fills a fisheries positional need, that was vacant for some years by the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife. During the in-between
years, the wild trout and natural resources were
continued to be assessed and data collected by other CDFW regional and
Fisheries Branch trout biologists until she pivoted into her new role
with CDFW. For the six previous years of her CDFW career, she managed
reservoir and lake fisheries in these same two
counties plus Imperial County, which included projects on the Colorado
River. Since she started working for Region 6, she has always had a
leadership role in the CDFW trout stocking aspect of recreational
fisheries of lakes and streams in Southern California,
and works under Sport Fish Restoration Grants awarded by the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service.
Before joining CDFW, she worked for the State under
the Department of Water Resources in both their field office in West
Sacramento and Bay Delta Office in downtown. Her many projects in the
Central Valley included tracking juvenile chinook
salmon through the Bay-Delta waterways and assessing impacts of
predation of salmonids by striped bass movements and habitat
preferences. Both of these projects were focused on GPS telemetry
tracking of fish using surgically implanted tags and corresponding
GPS receivers placed throughout tributaries, rivers, streams, and
canals of the Sacramento River Watershed spanning hundreds of stream
miles out to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Lastly, she worked for UC Davis as an associate
researcher and had an AmeriCorps National Service position serving under
a non-profit salmon group in the Yuba River watershed in the Sierra
Foothills in Northern California. The non-profit
job brought her to California. During her fisheries and natural
resource career in California, she has monitored mountain meadows,
conducted water quality programs, snorkeled streams, e-fished lakes from
boats and backpack e-fished streams, surveyed for macro
benthic invertebrates, and worked with 100’s of volunteers conducting
citizen-based science. She has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Zoology
with a focus on Freshwater Ichthyology from the Ohio State University.
Her favorite football team, of course, is THE
Ohio State Buckeyes.