The Year At Glance: Building Resilience
October 27, 2020
Excerpted from our 2019-20 Annual Report
monitoring at Mono Lake, CA. Photo: Annie Schmidt/Point Blue
2020 has underscored the importance of resilience. As we continue to collectively tackle a pandemic, racial injustice, and wildfires, Point Blue is keeping our staff as safe as possible while doing our critical work to help nature and communities adapt and thrive in a changing climate. Here are a few ways we’re building resilience at Point Blue:
We’re innovating.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re taking workshops, trainings, and supporter events online. We’re creating new solutions—including deploying drones to help count California Gulls at Mono Lake—to keep staff and interns safe while still conducting our rigorous field science.
We’re preparing.
As the recent Woodward Fire drew close to our Palomarin Field Station in the Point Reyes National Seashore, staff were able to activate a standing plan, safely evacuating interns and securing decades’ worth of priority data.
We’re learning.
We’re adding high-tech air quality sensors to our Field Stations in Bolinas, CA and the Farallon Islands, giving us the ability to track any potential air quality impacts on birds while also monitoring conditions to keep staff and interns safe.
We’re changing.
We are striving to better serve and include all of the communities in which we work. We’re changing recruitment, partner selection, and other practices to build a more equitable future for us all (see page 17 of our Annual Impact Report for more on our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work).