Thea Chesney

CA FUNDIS Collector
Penryn, CA

Thea Chesney is a lifelong Sierra Nevada foothill resident and naturalist. She developed a strong interest in local mushrooms, wildlife, and flora during childhood, earned her BS in forestry from UC Berkeley, and since then has spent her time exploring the California mountains and the organisms that call them home. She has worked as a botanist, a forester, and a field mycologist, and is always happiest working in the field. Her fieldwork and her own studies are centered in the Sierra Nevada and other mountains of California, and include occasional workshops in plant and mushroom identification, a future field guide to montane mushrooms, and efforts to catalog the diversity of both plants and fungi in these understudied regions.