Veronica Navarro

Veronica Navarro is an incoming Ray Conservation Fellow with NOAA Fisheries in Portland, Oregon. She grew up traveling along the southern region of the United States until her family settled in Los Angeles, California. She became interested in environmental justice, policy, conservation, and science communication because of noticeable differences in climate, air quality, wildlife preservation, and various other dissimilarities within the states she lived in.

Veronica recently graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Policy. While at UC Irvine, she spent her time studying hydrology, environmental policy and planning, agricultural systems, environmental data analysis, conservation, sustainability, natural resource management, forest ecology, and more. In addition to her studies, Veronica worked in two research labs. One lab focused on researching the ecological effects of FEMA disaster declarations easing environmental regulations (NEPA/ESA) to assist emergency response efforts by conducting literature reviews and data analysis. Her research in the other lab focused on fire distribution (size), FRP, fire intensity, biodiversity, land cover effects, and frequency of fires for the Pantanal in Brazil. Additionally, she also researched the cause patterns, severity of fires, and their effects on communities in indigenous regions such as the Xingu in Brazil.

Veronica enjoys reading, hiking, kayaking, swimming, softball, and spending some quality time with her kittens in her free time.