Central Valley Science Super Stars!

August 28, 2020

Please join us in congratulating Tom Gardali, Point Blue’s Pacific Coast and Central Valley Group Director, and Dr. Kristen (Kristy) Dybala, Point Blue Principal Ecologist in the Pacific Coast and Central Valley Group, for being awarded the Central Valley Joint Venture (CVJV) Science Excellence Award for their leadership roles in and contributions to the 2020 update of the CVJV Implementation Plan. The update will be published in the next month or so and we’ll post the link here when it’s available.

Joint Ventures work through partnership to conserve birds and their habitats throughout North America. Read more about all of them here. Point Blue works with many of them throughout the west.

Kristy and Tom played a primary role in ensuring that the CVJV Plan Update was completed with an incredibly high level of scientific rigor. They both set the standard not only for rigor but for transparency and accessibility of JV science. Indeed, they helped the CVJV set the standard for other North American JVs, particularly in terms of open-access, peer-reviewed objectives as well as the data, models and assumptions behind those objectives.

Tom was a committed leader of the Technical Plan Update Committee which provided the vision and process for a coordinated and standardized set of technical chapters to be included in the Plan Update. And Kristy helped author four of the technical manuscripts and Plan chapters, along with several other Point Blue colleagues including Tom, Matt Reiter, Dave Shuford, Ryan DiGaudio, Nat Seavy, and Catherine Hickey.

Without Tom and Kristy’s leadership in the planning and publication processes, we would not have the caliber CVJV Implementation Plan that we do today – a plan that sets forth ambitious yet realistic conservation objectives for Central Valley bird populations while also addressing multiple benefits of conservation to the communities of the Central Valley.