Alissa Fogg

Senior Ecologist

As a Senior Ecologist for the Working Lands Group at Point Blue, much of my work is focused on studying patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem health on private lands that are stewarded by a diversity of groups, including farmers, ranchers, and tribes. We are striving to understand the effects of climate change and how private landowners and the innovative stewardship practices they choose to use can be a catalyst to buffer the negative effects of change on wildlife and their habitats. Partnerships and relationships with all age groups and identities are at the heart of the work I do.  My passion is to incorporate community-based restoration with science and monitoring, whether it is planting acorns or gathering baseline data to help inform a cultural burn.

Previously, from 2009-2022, I coordinated multiple research and monitoring programs in the Sierra Nevada to study the effects of forest management and fire on birds with the goal of developing science-based recommendations to help guide management and policy decisions. I helped lead the Sierra Nevada-wide Bioregional Monitoring Project, studied the effects of salvage logging and herbicides on US Forest Service land and how public policy, such as allowing for managed wildfire in Yosemite National Park, can maintain resilient ecosystems.

I grew up in New England, attended Guilford College in North Carolina where I first discovered ornithology and moved to the Sierra Nevada in 2003. I received my M.S. in Wildlife Ecology from Humboldt State University, with research focused on the grazing effects on birds in mountain meadows.  I started as an intern for PRBO in 2005 in the tidal marsh program, had a stint in the desert riparian program, then joined the Sierra Nevada group in 2009 where I served as the Central Sierra Program Manager for 14 years.  In 2022, I moved back to Humboldt County with my family and am based in Eureka, thoroughly enjoying birding by bicycle and paddling on the rivers.