Community Spotlight: Meet Anne Burdette and the Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council

The Basics

Anne Burdette (she/her)

Board Secretary of the Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council (SBUCC)

Can you please share more about yourself and the mission of The Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council?

My name is Anne Burdette, and I am the Board Secretary of the Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council (SBUCC).  I’m also a recent UCSB graduate, earning my B.S. in Environmental Studies this June.  As a Santa Barbara local who grew up exploring creeks, parks, and my own backyard, I’ve been passionate about nature and wildlife for as long as I can remember. I want the rest of the community, including future generations, to be able to enjoy those same experiences. 

Serving on the board of SBUCC has provided a great way for me to make a positive impact on the natural places I grew up exploring, while inspiring others in the community to engage with their own nearby creeks.  Our mission is to preserve, protect, and restore the natural and urban streams of Santa Barbara County, which we do in a variety of ways.  We educate the public, stakeholders, and policy makers on the importance of ecologically functional watersheds and how those can best be maintained in an urban setting.  We sponsor and produce public events such as lectures, creek cleanups, and educational tours to provide opportunities for community members to learn about and get involved with local watersheds.  We cultivate a network of creek stewards across town and serve as a resource to those who are experiencing negative impacts in their watersheds.  Overall, we’re working towards both healthier creek habitats and a better relationship between people and their creeks.

My own career with SBUCC began in my freshman year of high school, when I read a newspaper article about a wildlife mapping project along Arroyo Burro Creek and decided to ask if I could help.  I got in touch with Dan McCarter, then the vice president of SBUCC, and we began working together to map the nesting locations of dusky-footed woodrats, an important riparian species, to help inform a habitat restoration project.  The next spring, Dan invited me to join the SBUCC board, which I have now served on for over 6 years.  Some highlights of my time on the board so far include working with community stakeholders to come up with a vision for restoration and nature education in a local open space along Arroyo Burro Creek, co-leading our Neighborhood Creek Stewardship Program and meeting potential creek stewards, designing our latest wearable merchandise which shows a map of all the creeks in town, and taking a key role in our strategic planning and board development efforts as part of our Governance Committee. 

Who has made a strong impact on your life and has helped you to get you where you are today?

There are many, but first of all, I would not be here without my parents, who encouraged me to be curious about nature from a young age.  It was the early experiences I shared with them that made me so passionate about protecting the outdoors.  Second, I credit Anacapa School, where I attended seventh through twelfth grade in downtown Santa Barbara, with teaching me the value and way of engaging with the local community.  Even as a tenth-grade student, I was well prepared to join the board of an organization because of the experiential education I was getting there.  Third, I would also not be here without my fellow board members, including those who originally saw the value I could bring to the organization as a high school student and welcomed me in, and those who joined us at later times and brought their own valuable perspectives onto the board.  They have all been great mentors to me, and I continue to learn a lot from their different life experiences and professional areas of expertise that I will carry far into my own career. 

Fourth, in my four years at UCSB, I was lucky to take classes on a wide range of environmental topics and connect with many influential professors and fellow students who have offered me their knowledge, advice, and perspectives.  One particular professor, Dr. Stephanie Moret, even joined our board after I worked on a project for SBUCC in her Conservation Planning class, and she has since been helpful in moving our organization forward. I came away from UCSB with not only a degree, but also a holistic and timely understanding of environmental conservation that I’m now able to apply to SBUCC, and many valuable connections to others in the field.

Lastly, I continue to learn and take examples from people in all areas of my life.  For example, through the part-time retail job I’ve held throughout school, in a company that has a strong focus on community, I have seen the positive impact that strong leadership and teamwork can have, and I have sought to apply that to SBUCC.  By combining the knowledge I gain from the people around me, I hope to use it to make a difference not only in SBUCC, but in my field and the community at large.

What are some recent highlights at The Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council?  And what events, milestones and steps are in the near future?

Recently, our focus has been on connecting more with the public, so that we can have more eyes on the creeks than just our small board and also bring the community together at the same time.  We’ve been working on establishing a Neighborhood Creek Stewardship Program, which involves a network of creek stewards looking out for their own local sections of creeks and relying on us as a resource for training, knowledge, and referrals to professionals who deal with specific creek issues.  We also have put on several successful public educational events, such as our recent booth at the Community Environmental Council’s Earth Day festival, at which we used an interactive stream table (loaned to us by Righetti High in Santa Maria) to demonstrate to youth, families, and adults how rivers can change morphology depending on natural and human-caused events.

We have come to realize that in order to fulfill our mission to its greatest potential and become a known and trusted resource for the public, we need to build our capacity as an organization, including growing and diversifying our board to better represent the communities we serve.  Last fall, we received a $10,000 support grant from the El Gato Channel Foundation to help our organization achieve its goals.  With the grant, we were able to become members of CNL and take classes including board recruitment, strategic planning, DEIJ, and fundraising, as well as attend the 2023 Partnership for Excellence conference put on by the Nonprofit Resource Network.  We are in the process of using some of the funds to acquire our own stream table, like the one we borrowed, as a tool for public outreach in diverse audiences including schools, libraries, and community groups.  Most recently, the board also voted to temporarily hire me part-time as an independent consultant to do capacity building work using the same grant.  I will be working with the Governance Committee to recruit new board members, update our bylaws, and put into action the board’s vision for the future of the organization. 

What about The Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council is special to you, what would you like our readers to know?

What is most special to me about SBUCC is the way that creeks naturally create connection- between habitats, between neighbors who meet when they go to check out the creek, between upstream and downstream neighborhoods, and between people and nature.  That’s why I’ve been so passionately involved in our public outreach and educational efforts, and the capacity building process that will allow us to maximize our potential as an organization that connects people and creeks.  Especially post-pandemic, there is a common understanding that people need avenues to connect and reconnect with those around them and spend time outdoors, and I’m excited for SBUCC to be part of that by bringing people together around creek stewardship.  I also appreciate that we strive to connect with fellow nonprofit organizations, schools, and other community groups by collaborating on events and supporting each other’s programs, so that we can help each other fulfill our missions.

Why did you think it was important to become an organizational member of the CNL? What do you value most about your membership?

We became an organizational member of CNL after having a board retreat this past December in which we assessed the current state of our organization, the future of it that we wanted to see, and how we could achieve that future.  As a small working board with members bringing expertise in various fields but not in nonprofit leadership, we decided it was important to educate ourselves through CNL’s classes.  We have been more than satisfied with the classes we have attended so far, and we’re excited to attend more in the future.  Not only have we gained valuable expert insight from the speakers on different aspects of running an organization, we’ve also connected with members of other nonprofits and exchanged ideas.  The process of turning our organization in its current state into one that has the capacity to fulfill our mission in the way we envision can seem intimidating, especially for those of us who lack prior nonprofit experience, and because of CNL’s classes, we see that we are not alone in that process and can acquire the knowledge and skillsets that we need to be successful.

How can the community support you? Where can they find you on social media?

As I mentioned prior, the more people there are looking out for the creeks, the better, so you can help us out simply by getting involved in our organization and its programs, becoming a creek steward, or reaching out to learn more about your local creek!  Visit our website (sburbancreeks.org) or follow us on Instagram (sb_urbancreeks) to learn more about us and the watersheds we protect, and join our email list to receive updates and program invites.  You can also make a tax-deductible donation through our website or via check to provide financial support for our programs.

Anything else you would like to add? 

I’d like to thank CNL for highlighting the Santa Barbara Urban Creeks Council this month and giving us this opportunity to spread the word about what we do!  We welcome anyone to email us at info@sburbancreeks.org to talk creeks with us or get involved in any of our programs.