Hope Leeson exemplifies all three criteria for the Survey’s Distinguished Naturalist Award: advancement of scientific knowledge, outstanding teaching, and outstanding contributions to public awareness. Leeson is a botanist with 40 years of field experience in southern New England. Her many years of flagging wetlands, conducting plant inventories, field studies of community ecology, and consulting with non-profits and private landowners on habitat management throughout Rhode Island and beyond, have contributed to her intimate knowledge of the natural areas and plant communities of Rhode Island and earned her universal respect from professionals and amateurs throughout the conservation community in Rhode Island and beyond.
Leeson’s work experience includes staff botanist at the Rhode Island Natural History Survey (RINHS) (2009-19), enforcement coordinator for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) Division of Freshwater Wetlands (1986-89), RIDEM naturalist at Goddard State Park (1986), and Principle and Senior Environmental and Wetland Scientist at engineering firms Vanasse, Hangen, Brustin (1989-92) and Applied Biosystems (1992-94). She has consulted for and been employed with numerous non-profit organizations dedicated to documenting Rhode Island’s rare plant populations, native plant communities, and invasive species, as well as providing public education on these topics in forums including Rhode Island Wild Plant Society (RIWPS), New England Wildflower Society (now Native Plant Trust) (NPT), The Nature Conservancy of Rhode Island (TNC), Save the Bay, and, before her formal employment there, the Rhode Island Natural History Survey (RINHS).
Hope Leeson’s botanical knowledge and long-term commitment to Rhode Island’s native plant communities are exemplary. She is widely recognized for her knowledge and sagacity among staff at non-profits and state and federal agencies throughout southern New England. As coordinator of the Rhody Native™ Initiative beginning in 2009, Leeson applied her understanding of native plant communities and plant growth habits developed from her gardening experience to the sustainable procurement of wild collected seed, propagation, and consultation with land managers for successful habitat restoration. She presented the Lisa Gould Native Plant Program on seed harvesting and cleaning in 2013. In 2016-17, she presented a series of workshops to the Newport Tree Society on tree propagation. Her innovations in native plant propagation are continuing to inform the Reseed RI initiative of the RIWPS, a follow-on to the Rhody Native Initiative.
Hope’s publications and major reports include a major assessment of coastal lagoon plant communities (Botanical assessment of coastal habitat along three coastal lagoons in Rhode Island, and disturbance mediated responses of vegetation to thin layer deposition, 2019 unpublished report for RINHS); an analysis of condition assessment methodologies for rare wetland types (Freshwater wetlands of the highest ecological value; 2018 white paper for RINHS and RIDEM); with Graham L. Gardner a report on the Rhody Native Initiative (Rhody Native: Growing the Local Aesthetic, 2015 Chapter News, RI Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects); and reports on invasive management demonstrations in North Kingstown and West Greenwich (Demonstration of Management Techniques for Invasive Plants of Forested Ecosystems in Rhode Island, in 2007 and Forest Health Works Project Final Report, in 2012).
Leeson has extensive teaching experience in both informal and formal settings. She has led field trips for RIWPS, taught wetland ecology and wetland botany workshops for NPT, and invasive training workshops for RINHS, USFWS, and RI Land Trust Council. She has presented multiple times at the Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group conference and the RI Land and Water Conservation Summit. She has taught field botany classes at the University of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She has been an adjunct lecturer at RISD since 2012 teaching in the History, Philosophy and Social Sciences, and Landscape Architecture departments. Recently she has been developing and teaching innovative courses at RISD including one on botany in the kitchen and one on urban botany.
It is hard to imagine thinking about people who have contributed to field botany in Rhode Island and who exemplify beneficial curiosity and innovativeness and not naming Hope Leeson in the first breath.
Adapted from a letter of nomination written to the Board of Directors Nominating Committee by RINHS staff. For many years Hope was employed by RINHS, but she officially separated from the Survey in 2019.