Anthony has always had an interest in environmental conservation and ecology. Reducing his impact and remediating the environment has become a priority for him.
The degradation of the world’s biomes is an anxiety felt by many people and it’s easy to feel helpless at times, but there really is so much people can do to improve the quality of their local community and environment. When Anthony was 15, he discovered that he could support and attract wildlife in his suburban backyard by growing native plants. That led to an addiction to reading native plant seed catalogs and an obsession over what plants he could possibly grow.
Since then, he has been hooked on native plant propagation, which was one of his motivators to go to college. After graduating high school, he went and got his Biology A.S. at Sinclair Community College in Dayton in 2018 before transferring to Ohio University and completing his Field Ecology B.A. in the Fall of 2022.
While at Sinclair, Anthony did an internship at Cox Arboretum working under the lead horticulturist. At Ohio University, he did undergraduate research on wild leeks. He took a break from school and did landscaping as well as serving a term with Americorps, doing trail restoration projects and invasive species removal in several National Parks.
Today, Anthony’s interest from adolescence still lives within. He still enjoys experimenting with the local flora. He is happy to be able to work with Rural Action to launch such an exciting social enterprise and hopes to see it grow in a phenomenal way.