Writing Samples

I write about travel, food, and the environment. I enjoy creating social commentary pieces and photo essays and use my sense of humor and irreverence as often as possible. 

I can turn your writing drudgery into delegation bliss. I write and ghostwrite white papers, blog posts, and social media responses. I have authored a book with a second contract underway. I have also authored and co-authored numerous proprietary project reports, site characterization studies, monitoring plans, proposals, and technical memos. I can effectively create this type of written work for you. CONTACT

Best Little Book of Birds Coastal Washington

My first book! Anticipated release date, June 2024. Washington’s coast is teeming with scores of beautiful birds, and the Best Little Book of Birds: Coastal Washington will help you find them. This easy-to-use book will help you identify more than 100 commonly occurring birds that help make the Washington coast the natural wonder that it is. An emphasis on best practices and habitat sustainability help empower conservation and ensure that birding on the coast will be possible for years to come. Perfect for budding and experienced birders alike, this sleek and compact guide is the ideal travel companion for every trip to the coast. Tamara Enz has worked as a biologist for the past 25 years. Formally trained as a plant biologist, she spent more time studying birds than plants. From casual observation to serious research, central Maine to southern California and Arctic Alaska to central Missouri, Tamara’s work with birds has spanned the country. She has lived on the Oregon and Washington coasts and conducted bird surveys throughout the West.

Solve for ‘x’

Endless miles of bluffs and beaches shelter sleepy towns along the wild Pacific Coast of North America. The ocean spreads away from sand and rock in an implacable expanse. Birds float lazily beyond the breakers. Gulls wheel and scream overhead. Sandpipers and peeps dash about madly at surf’s edge, spinning in unison in the air. And, under cover of early-morning semi-darkness, marbled murrelets leave the ocean and fly to the trees. The landscape is ruled by the stoic height and girth of trees. I

Turtles not Nurdles

The future is not in plastics. These are Nurdles, the plastic pellets that are used to make all plastic products. They are small and light and often escape the captivity of shipping containers and factory waste streams. They turn up in the most remarkable places, like the Oregon beach in the photo above where I collected this vial. After Nurdles are extruded into their final form, they go off to live in the world. When their useful life as some product or another is over, they are discarded an

The rebranding of Nature

In my most cynical moments, I see a brightly lit, well-appointed marketing office with sleek, well-dressed communications people sitting in comfortable chairs pitching a new ad campaign to a group of equally scruffy biologists in Carharrts and flannel. “We’ll call it, ‘Ecosystem Services, making nature more useful again.’ It’s a new way of thinking about the natural world.” A buzz phrase coined in the early Oughts, “Ecosystem Services,” identifies human benefits of the natural world and values

Drain the swamp

When Europeans invaded North America, it held an estimated 220 million acres of wetlands. In the intervening years, approximately half of that was lost to development, “reclamation,” dredging, poor land-use practices, and, more recently, drought and climate change. Wetlands are one of the most ecologically productive habitat types on Earth, providing a multitude of benefits to humans, including economic boons like billions of dollars in flood damage prevention and a place for the vast majority

If I hear this phrase again...

“In these difficult times” has become the new standard, but what was easy about the time before now? Remember, way back in February before the Coronavirus pandemic really hit the US? Remember how houselessness was a huge issue? Remember how affordable housing, even for people with fulltime jobs, was problematic? Healthcare was unaffordable to most and marginally provided by employers and the government. The education system was underfunded, failing, and exorbitant—and leaving young people fortu
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