Board of Directors & Staff
Christina McVie, Secretary, Tucson
Chris is a retired Registered Nurse who specialized in Emergency nursing. In 1974 Chris served on the Tucson 200 Bicentennial Commission, producing the finale for the city’s celebration. She participated in the original Pima County Comprehensive Planning process in 1992 and was involved with the efforts to incorporate the Town of Tortolita. She served on the Pima College Northwest Campus Site Selection Committee, served five years as a member of Pima County’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan steering committee and also as a member of the county’s 2002 northwest comprehensive plan advisory committee. She has worked closely with the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection and as Conservation Chair for the Tucson Audubon Society. Chris was involved in the process that culminated in the proclamation establishing the Ironwood Forest National Monument and was honored to be one of the people who accompanied Secretary Babbitt on his tour prior to the designation.
Mike Quigley, President, Tucson
Mike has worked for the federal government and several private corporations. Currently, he is on staff at the Sky Island Alliance and an advocate for environmental conservation. Mike was one of the founding members of the Friends of Ironwood Forest.
Royce Ballinger, Vice President
Royce is Professor Emeritus and a former administrator (e.g., Director of Biological Sciences, Assistant Executive Vice President and Provost, etc.) at the University of Nebraska. He moved to Marana in 2004. He has a life long interest in natural history and the desert southwest having been raised in western Texas. He has a Ph.D. in vertebrate ecology (Texas A&M) with a specialization in population ecology, life history strategies, and the biology of reptiles and amphibians. He has used reptiles, especially lizards as research subjects in western Nebraska, southeastern Arizona, and Mexico. He has published over 130 papers in peer reviewed journals and is author of How to Know the Amphibians and Reptiles and has recently completed a book on the Amphibians and Reptiles of Nebraska (due out in 2010). He strongly supports preservation of Ironwood Forest N. M. for both its esthetic and scientific value and considers IFNM a crown jewel in our backyard.
Lahsha Brown, Executive Director
Lahsha grew up enjoying life in the great outdoors as her parents often took her hiking, camping and fishing all over the forests, lakes and wilderness of Idaho, where she was born and raised. Her love of the outdoors became more than just a favorite hobby when she began doing outreach work for The Wilderness Society’s Idaho office in 1994. At The Wilderness Society she led campaigns to protect Wilderness areas, Wild & Scenic Rivers, National Monuments, NCAs, and other public lands. Lahsha has experience working with the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service, and she has policy expertise in a number of land use areas, including land-use planning, recreation, off-road vehicle use, livestock grazing, and military training.
Lahsha attended Boise State University and University of Arizona and is certified in Riparian Area Restoration and Monitoring from Oregon State University. She has served as an appointed member of the BLM Resource Advisory Council in Idaho and as co-chairman of the Owyhee County Recreation Task Force. She stayed with The Wilderness Society for 11 years, directing the Idaho Office National Landscape Conservation System program, until moving to Tucson from Boise. She worked for Sky Island Alliance from 2007 to 2009 as a landscape conservation campaign leader in Cochise County and the surrounding area. Besides working, Lahsha, who considers herself a “bona fide desert rat,” enjoys doing anything outside and being a wife and mother.
Gaile James, Treasurer
Gaile, a Marana resident, is retired from a 30-year career with Baltimore County Government in Maryland. She annually developed and managed a multi-million dollar capital budget for the Baltimore County Police Department, a metropolitan force of 2,100 uniformed officers. Prior to her decade-plus of service with the police department, Gaile was a manager in the Baltimore County Office of Employment and Training. She is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Baltimore with a degree in Inter-Disciplinary Studies (Management/Sociology/Political Science). She is an experienced birder and travels extensively in pursuit of that interest.
Young Cage
Young Cage graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in Aeronautical engineering. Soon after graduation he was hired as a pilot for United Airlines. Young spent the next 35-years flying domestic and international routes and retired as a captain flying the Boeing-777. Since retiring he has pursued his passion for natural history and herpetology and has rediscovered his interest in wildlife photography. Young travels frequently to wildlife rich locations including Central America, South America, and Australia. In 1999, after twenty-five years in Denver, he and his wife, Cheryl, moved to Tucson. Young has twice served as president of the Tucson Herpetological Society.
Carol Gawrychowski
David Barnes
Gordon Hanson
Lainie Levick