Meet Our Community: Efren Ibarreta

Paige Combs - KCCB
15 hours ago
3 min read

As part of our seasonal spotlight series, we’re celebrating our incredible employees, partners, and volunteers who help make the work of Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful (KCCB) possible. In our Earth Day Blog, we talk about the ‘Ripple Effect’ and how all it takes is one person to inspire many to make a change in their community. Today we’re excited to introduce Efren, a BioBlitz and Cleanup Team Lead. Efren learned that it's important to improve the conditions of our environment, that being curious can lead to bigger things, and that our memories can create a lasting impact.

Role: Volunteer, BioBlitz and Cleanup Team Lead

With KCCB: Over 7 years…

Fun Facts 🌟

Happy place: Union & Utica Reservoir Sierra Nevada 🏞️
Unusual creek sightings: Glow worm 🪱
Favorite hobbies: Scuba diving 🤿
Favorite place to eat: Ethiopian, Somali, and more! 😋
Favorite color: Purple 🌈

When asked about the most unusual thing he’s seen around the creek, Efren said, “At one of the BioBlitzes I saw a glow worm. It wasn’t an adult. I found it at the bottom of a seep in the water. It wasn’t alive, but it was interesting. I didn’t expect to see or to find any glow worms on the creek”

How It All Started 🌱

Efren moved to Santa Clara County in 2018 and lived close to Coyote Creek. Around that time, he mentioned that he ventured around the Santa Cruz mountains pretty regularly, so whenever he could find trails in the area, that motivated him to get out. He became especially interested during COVID, and he attended his first BioBlitz with Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful in 2019.

“My major motivation to join Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful was to learn more about what was going on in terms of the trails adjacent to the creek,” Efren said.

What began as a small moment to learn more about his local environment turned into a leadership opportunity.

“I joined so I could learn more about the animals and plants that can be found along the creek, and now I’m leading some of the BioBlitzes.”

Impact on the Community 🌎

Efren has stayed involved over the past 7 years for several reasons. Primarily for him, it was a “great excuse to get outside, keep me active, and connect with some great people.”

Some of the things he has enjoyed the most include the restoration events and habitat restoration at Alviso Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

The greatest impact, for Efren, was being able to build leadership through his own curiosity in attending events, the realization that all this work being done was improving the conditions downstream and throughout the watershed. Then lastly, he discovered that Coyote Creek develops lasting memories in all of us in such an organic way that people learn to care simply by being around it.

He said, “I was on a conference call, and I mentioned I volunteer with KCCB, and the person on the call said, ‘That’s great, I used to go there when I was a kid to play in the water, ’ so it does have an impact.”

Looking Ahead: The Future of KCCB ☀️🌳

Efren is especially excited to see how the creek continues to transform as we work on cleanups and restore the natural habitat. He described that although the cleanup events can be “messy”, they also “can be quite fun.”

Efren expressed that “the improvement in the creek and dam, particularly further upstream, is just beautiful. The creek runs through a city with a million people, and it’s just amazing how beautiful it actually is. You can get a sense of the future by just going further upstream.”

And perhaps this is an important analogy and lesson when thinking about any problems. Perhaps we all need to visualize not just our immediate issues in the world but also think about what’s happening upstream and the possibilities for our future.

Final Thoughts ✨

What keeps Efren involved and volunteering is his passion to learn more about the creek and restore it. By making Coyote Creek a better place, Efren notices that ‘you feel it in the day-to-day’. That impact is happening now. The number of connections that can be made by getting involved has no limits.

To learn more about Efren, see his spotlight on Instagram