Meet the Founders of Suri Futures

John Gardiner, PhD, PE Oregon

Christine Perala Gardiner, PhD

John is a civil engineer who moved from Britain to Oregon in 1998.  He has worked in the field of river engineering and catchment or watershed planning for over 25 years.  He and Christine married in 1996, and they together worked in England team-teaching water resources in the UK.  They moved to Portland OR in 1998 to work in the field of river restoration.  They started their own firm WaterCycle Inc. in 2000, and have since worked as teachers and consultants in watershed restoration and stormwater management.  Today John also works with Bioengineering Associates of Laytonville CA in river engineering, especially river bank stabilization.  His theme is working with nature to achieve affordable, ecologically-sensitive solutions to water engineering problems.

Christine is a native of Portland Oregon.  She has worked for over 25 years in Oregon and California in the broad fields of ecological restoration.  She holds a BA in Botany & Environmental Studies from Pitzer College, CA.  She studied for an MS in Watershed Management at Humboldt State University, Arcata CA through the Institute for River Ecosystems.  Christine completed her PhD in 1999 in Physical Geography at Middlesex University, Enfield UK.  Her academic work compiled a body of research synthesizing river ecology, fluvial geomorphology and river hydraulic engineering to guide affordable riverbank and floodplain revegetation.  She's delighted to apply all that training in science by farming alpacas in the Illinois Valley.

John & Christine love working together.  They've focussed on raising suris since 2002.  For watershed scientists, alpacas fit well into the new model for American agriculture many people call "sustainable agriculture".  This means that the production of our crops this year don't diminish the productivity of our soils for future years and future generations.  Care of our livestock, our soils, pastures and water supply for the present and future are a natural blending of goals for alpaca owners.

Suri Futures now resides at Riverside Alpaca Farm in Cave Junction Oregon, in the beautiful Illinois Valley, tributary of the Rogue River Basin.