After leading the conservation nonprofit Kenai Watershed Forum since 2016, Jack Sinclair has resigned as the group’s executive director. On Tuesday the Watershed Forum announced that its board of directors had chosen senior environmental scientist Branden Bornemann as acting executive director.
Sinclair, who had previously been the Division of Parks & Outdoor Recreation supervisor for the Kenai Peninsula from 2005 to 2012, and a ranger before that in the Prince William Sound area, took over in December 2015 from the Watershed Forum’s first executive director Robert Ruffner, who had led the group since its founding in 1997.
Bornemann, who began working for the Watershed Forum in June 2011 as a water quality and GIS specialist, said he intends to apply for the permanent director’s position.
“I’m getting a chance here to prove myself, and then regrouping after that,” he said.
The Kenai Watershed forum’s ongoing projects and activities include monitoring turbidity in the Kenai River, counting boats in the river, sampling bacteria on river mouth beaches, expanding its Streamwatch volunteer program to the south peninsula, putting on conservation education summer camps, monitoring for invasive species in backcountry areas, and surveying culverts for the fish passage they allow.
Reach Ben Boettger at bboettger@peninsulaclarion.com.
