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Janine Castro is the recently retired project leader for the Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office in Vancouver, Washington, and worked in conservation for over 30 years.
Castro grew up in a farming family in the northern Sacramento Valley of California. She was born in the Seattle area, but her parents returned to a small agricultural community of about 5,000 people in a town called Orland, where her mother was born and still lives today. Her family started out in the dairy business but went on to farm mostly alfalfa and corn.
Growing up, Castro remembers being outside almost all the time, but that her working family rarely took vacations. “You don't have vacations when you're a farmer. It just doesn't happen,” she said.
But her time outdoors ended up being a big part of the path she ended up choosing in life. Growing up in the Sacramento Valley, summers were very dry and hot; so the rivers, the water, were a vital element of her existence. She needed the water.
“We would go down to the end of our street, my brother and I with our friends, and we would cross an irrigation canal, jump over a few fences and go down to Stoney Creek and find a hole. We'd go swimming and be completely unsupervised… We spent a lot of time down there.”
Coming full circle, Castro eventually earned her master’s degree in environmental geomorphology studying Stoney Creek, the essential water body where she spent her childhood.
Castro was the first in her family to go to college. She was a good student, but throughout her life she had to prove herself in school. Growing up in a small town where many of the teachers had also taught her parents, aunts, and uncle, not to mention her older brother, who may have been unruly at times, she had a family reputation to break through.
Over those years, Castro had teachers that impacted her both positively and negatively. Because one English teacher told her she was a terrible writer she felt that path was closed to her; however, she also had a great math and physics teacher and found the subjects so logical, and so she decided her path would be math and science.
Though Castro was the first in her family to go to college, it was never a question in her mother’s mind that she would.
“My mom was very clear. It wasn’t a question,” she remembered.
But being first meant Castro had to navigate college application processes alone and face fees her family couldn’t afford. She applied to many universities and was accepted to numerous prestigious schools, but the cost of tuition was too high.
“I saw the tuition – and the tuition for a year was more than my parents’ joint income. I never told my parents that I got in.”
Facing this financial challenge and with little time left before school started, Castro applied to Chico State University, located about 20 miles from home, and was accepted. Though her first loves were math and physics, she took a leap and chose a double major of geology and geography for her undergraduate work. She fell in love with geology in the very first class she took on the subject, and she never changed her major. Fortunately, she was able to secure a small scholarship that covered her tuition and books.
Castro worked nights at a mini mart in Orland and commuted to Chico State where she also worked days while going through school, earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After finishing her bachelor’s degree, she started working for the Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service or NRCS) as a field geologist and then a cartographer, balancing her work and school loads while commuting 90 miles a day for work.
As a budding geomorphologist, Castro was a one-person show. At that time, no faculty were doing that type of work at Chico State. She taught herself by reading every book she could find on the subject – and to note another full circle occurrence, one of those books was written by her now husband, Colin Thorne.
While there, Castro met a graduate student who encouraged her to go on to get her Ph.D. The thought had never occurred to her until this fortuitous conversation.
Castro went on to Oregon State University for her Ph.D. work evaluating the Rosgen stream classification system, studying 130 streams in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California over a single summer. She was fortunate that her Ph.D. research was also part of her job with the NRCS. It was notably also around this time that salmon were being listed for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. While completing her dissertation, a job opportunity opened for a geomorphologist position with the NRCS. Castro applied for it and secured the job in Portland, Oregon.
Castro worked for NRCS in Portland for another five years, meeting with private landowners, traveling nearly 75% of her time, while writing her entire Ph.D. dissertation in hotel rooms while on the road. During her time at NRCS, she joined a newly formed salmon habitat recovery team. A few years later, a geomorphology position at the Service was created, and Castro landed the job at the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Office.
This job as a geomorphologist was a dream for Castro; for 17 years she was in the field, working with landowners, doing restoration work, and working with our National Wildlife Refuges. When she made the move to her job as the project leader for the Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, people wondered why she’d leave behind something that seemed so ideal.
She took the new position knowing that it would allow her to achieve higher level goals that she couldn’t in her previous position. One of those goals came to fruition in 2024, and updated in 2025, with the publication of Passage Guidelines for Select Native Fishes of the Pacific Northwest, an innovative guidance that raises awareness of fish passage fish passage
Fish passage is the ability of fish or other aquatic species to move freely throughout their life to find food, reproduce, and complete their natural migration cycles. Millions of barriers to fish passage across the country are fragmenting habitat and leading to species declines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Fish Passage Program is working to reconnect watersheds to benefit both wildlife and people.
Learn more about fish passage needs beyond Pacific salmon and steelhead, specifically addressing passage needs for bull trout, Pacific lamprey, white sturgeon, freshwater sculpin, and small-bodied fishes in the Pacific Northwest.
Her project leader role was also the first government position she’s worked in that had a predecessor. Both in school and her career, Castro had become used to being the first – first to conduct specific studies or work in a field, first to develop positions that hadn’t existed before, teaching herself, learning from others, and building programs.
Among her many accomplishments, Castro used those same self-starting skills to also become an avid and talented public speaker, a skill she passed on to others.
Like most, Castro was not at first a fan of speaking publicly. “I never had an interest in public speaking all the way through college,” she said. “I hated giving presentations. I avoided it like the plague; I essentially would take a lower grade to not have to give a presentation, and I took small group communication so I would not have to speak by myself.”
But when she took her job at NRCS, giving presentations to landowner groups was one of her primary duties. This scared her, but as she had in the past when embarking on something new, Castro did research and taught herself. And as her public speaking roles became more frequent, she continued to take public speaking workshops and even an acting class for public speakers.
Castro is co-founder of an organization called River Restoration Northwest, a nonprofit that holds symposiums attended by hundreds of restoration practitioners and the broader restoration community of practice every year. One year after watching presenter after presenter, Castro realized that the speakers who were giving such important information could use tools to deliver the information more effectively. She took it upon herself to start teaching short courses for public speaking the day before each symposium to help people, and it became a huge success. She has done it every year since.
Castro also co-founded Science Talk, an organization of science communicators. “My interest really is helping people like me, who are intimidated by public speaking, but who need to share their science,” said Castro.
She says the short course has made a noticeable difference in the presentations, and ultimately, helps to more effectively convey the important findings each scientist and practitioner is discovering. “It ups the game for everybody,” she said.
Now reaching the end of her 34-year career in federal government, Castro reflects on what advice she would give to her younger self or someone coming up in the field.
“Take more chances, be a bit more bold,” she says. “Travel more.”
Castro has been working since she was 16 and never took a break from school. Being the first of her family to go to college, and coming from a family that was financially strapped, she felt pressure – that she had to be cautious to ensure success.
“I felt like I couldn't fail…because I had no safety net, and I was creating a safety net for my entire family”, she remembered. “I am my own safety net.”
And what’s next for Castro? She will enjoy more time in her garden and traveling the world; but her gritty work ethic and scientist heart will keep her engaged. She also plans to write, stay involved with numerous technical groups and organizations, continue to teach public speaking, and mentor individuals she has built relationships with over the years.
About the Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office: Our staff collaborates with local, state and Tribal partners to conserve, restore, and improve native fish and aquatic resources throughout Oregon and along the Columbia River and all of its tributaries downstream from McNary Dam to the Pacific Ocean. We study wild and hatchery aquatic organisms and their populations, support habitat restoration, and evaluate restoration projects, fish hatchery practices and human impacts. The results of our studies allow land and natural resource managers to make science informed decisions.
