About Pat Higgins

Pat Higgins has lived in Humboldt County since 1972 and has been married to his wife Diane for over 25 years. He loves the outdoors, gardening, baseball, music, photography and fishing. He is politically active and concerned that Humboldt County should maintain its identity and local control. His business experience of more than 30 years helps Pat understand economic cycles and the needs of the business community.

Pat and Diane

Pat is a third generation Californian, raised on the coast south of San Francisco. He decided to attend Humboldt State University because he was drawn by Humboldt County’s beauty and its bountiful fisheries resources. After graduating from HSU with a degree in biology in 1975, Pat found success as the co-owner and operator of the area’s largest stereo and video store before he sold his interest and returned to HSU from 1985-87. He immediately began to apply the fisheries and watershed knowledge he gained in graduate school, first working as a U.S. Forest Service biologist for two years, and then as an independent consulting fisheries biologist.

Higgins has become a regional expert on Pacific salmon and watershed restoration. He has written entire chapters in large-scale fishery restoration plans and has helped monitor and evaluate restoration programs. His extensive knowledge will help him work effectively toward control of water quality problems and the restoration of stream flows necessary to recover salmon.

In the past decade Pat has helped create the Klamath Resource Information System database and website www.krisweb.com to support long-term management and monitoring toward salmon recovery. This system has now been applied to 70% of northwestern California and as far away as the Gulf of Maine, where it is being used to assist in Atlantic salmon recovery.

Since February 2004, Pat has been working with the natural resources consulting group Kier Associates to assist with control of water quality problems and dam removal on the Klamath River. You can learn more on-line at www.klamathwaterquality.com, which is a website Pat helped create that explains Klamath River restoration needs, as well as other major water quality issues in our region.

As a Harbor District Commissioner, Pat has battled to help our community forge and implement a near shore ocean conservation strategy. You can see the web pages on Marine Protected Areas that he helped create at www.humboldtbay.org.

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