David W. Winkler

Research Associate

Dr. Winkler is a professor and faculty curator of birds in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.  His involvement with our organization began in the late 1970’s as an intern on the Farallones.  He co-led the team of a dozen undergrads that made the initial whole-ecosystem study of Mono Lake in 1976. He co-founded the Mono Lake Committee in 1978 with David Gaines, who developed the Committee to fight to reverse the lake’s declining water levels caused by diversion of tributary streams.  In 1978 he was part of the Point Blue (then PRBO) team studying the nesting population of Snowy Plovers in the Mono Basin.  From 1979 through 1982 he studied nesting California Gulls on the islands of Mono Lake, threatened by declining lake levels.  This study evolved into a long-term monitoring project that continues to this day at Point Blue.  Dr. Winkler advises and collaborates on Point Blue’s riparian and waterbird research and in a pan-American study of Tachycineta swallows called Golondrinas de las Americas. Learn more about Dr. Winkler here.

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