Hope in the Cloud?
November 29, 2022
By Dr. Grant Ballard, Chief Science Officer Being in the midst of a technological revolution isn’t always as exciting as we might hope. In fact, the promise of the revolution can be hard to appreciate given that the outcome seems to be mostly an endless proliferation of distractions (think: receiving custom-designed advertisements, thanks to artificial
Strengthening the Strands, One Snowy Plover Flock at a Time
November 27, 2022
Monterey State Beach is one of Point Blue’s southernmost Monterey Bay Snowy Plover monitoring locations and it’s part of a swath of key locations that stretches from the Point Reyes National Seashore just north of San Francisco to Vandenberg Air Force Base just north of Santa Barbara.
Bird-A-Thon Team with the Youngest Counters Detect the Most Species
November 15, 2022
We gathered in the darkness of 5:00am at the Bear Valley Visitor Center. Like last year, we were treated to a wonderful flight of Swainson’s Thrushes migrating and calling in the dark sky above us. We were able to hear a Northern Saw-Whet Owl and several Great Horned Owls right from the parking lot, so those three species marked the beginning of our list!
Major USDA Grant to Support Climate-Smart Agriculture
October 25, 2022
In September, the USDA announced a huge new pot of funding, sending $2.8 billion to 70 climate-smart agriculture projects. Each project aims, in its own way, to support the production of climate-smart commodities, which are defined as those that are produced using practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon. We’re excited to share
Team Ornicycles Thanks You
October 24, 2022
What an epic day! We covered over 28? miles on our mountain bikes and identified 98 different bird species in their natural habitat in and around Bolinas Lagoon, California. What were the highlights and lowlights? I could recount how amazing it was to share the bird-by-bike stoke with our new team members, Aidan and Amy, or how we were thwarted by the afternoon fog from reaching our goal of 100 species, or how we nearly collapsed by climbing two massive ridges in pursuit transcendent descents.
The Common Mers’ Bird-A-Thon Day Mer-ventures and Fin-tastic Finds
October 9, 2022
Spoiler alert: we didn’t end our day in a swim as planned due to weather and timing, but we definitely scaled up our collective knowledge and excitement about the amazing birds and other animals and plants that share the land, wetlands, and water with us. The mermaid pod gathered at Point Blue’s headquarters along the
Update from the Field: Fire Management in the Illilouette Creek Basin, Yosemite
October 4, 2022
Our days in the Illilouette Creek Basin began in early twilight, crawling out of a sleeping bag to start bird surveys. Mornings involved 3 to 4 miles of route-finding off trail through a gauntlet of fallen logs, thorny shrubs, steep slopes, and the otherwise unpredictable.
How Uniting People, Data, and Technology Conserves Wildlife
September 4, 2022
The journey from a pie-in-the-sky data management idea to the moment where Point Blue is managing ALL bird data for every one of the Department of Defense’s installations, covering 27 million acres of land. (Originally published in our Summer 2022 issue of the Point Blue Quarterly) When Dr. Grant Ballard helped bring together more than
Hope is Green and Soggy in the Sierra Nevada
August 28, 2022
It was July 28, 2021, I was sitting in my living room overlooking Lake Almanor in the Northern Sierra Nevada, having spent the morning raking fir needles and covering attic vents, I was hunched over the air purifier sucking in as much fresh air as I could get. It was 3 weeks into the Dixie Fire, and the sky, much like what the San Francisco Bay Area experienced in the fall of 2020, had looked an eerie orange for weeks from wildfire smoke with little relief. I was alone, having sent my family out of harm’s way the week before.
Science News: Guiding Renewable Energy, Celebrating Climate Legislation, and much more
August 19, 2022
Biden Signs Landmark Climate Bill On August 16th, 2022 President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Although it’s not perfect, it is the biggest, most important piece of federal climate legislation to date. It encompasses clear and actionable policy to drive the needed investment to decarbonize our economy emissions. Importantly, the bill clearly prioritizes
