Los Padres Forest to Get New Supervisor

A New Mexico forestry official has been chosen as the new supervisor at Los Padres National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service has announced.

Jeanine Derby, who has served as supervisor at Cibola National Forest in Albuquerque, N.M., since 1992, reports to her new post in September.

“Jeanine is going to be a great forest supervisor for Los Padres, a real leader,” said Pacific Southwest Regional Forester Lynn Sprague. “Due to her experience on the Cibola, a forest which spreads out from the Arizona/New Mexico border to Oklahoma, she’s well suited to handle a large and diverse forest like Los Padres.”

Los Padres is among the largest and most diverse national forests, encompassing more than 1.75 million acres along 220 miles of central California coast.

Derby received a bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of California, Riverside, in 1975.

Derby, a botanist and land management planner at San Bernardino National Forest until 1985, completed a master’s degree in biology with a plant ecology emphasis at San Bernardino State University in 1979.

She then served as a district ranger on the Sequoia National Forest for four years before heading to New Mexico, first as deputy forest supervisor on the Lincoln National Forest and then on to Cibola.