5 Questions with our new Board Chair, Anne Chadwick
February 1, 2023
Anne Chadwick became our new Board Chair last summer. Point Blue has a very engaged and talented Board and Anne exemplifies those qualities. She is an author, illustrator, and photographer and is bringing her creative talent to our leadership team. She is past president of the Truckee Donner Land Trust; former International Trade Policy Advisor
STRAW Program Assumes Management of Restored Novato Baylands
December 8, 2022
Point Blue Conservation Science’s STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring A Watershed) Program is excited to step into a management role at the Novato Baylands Restoration site. STRAW has played a key role in engaging communities to restore this former airfield since the beginning and our staff are looking forward to working with site partners, the
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
