Point Blue

STRAW Program Assumes Management of Restored Novato Baylands

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 is Green and Soggy in the Sierra Nevada

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.

Celebrate Our 57th Birthday with Native Plants!

Give 10% and get 10% when you purchase CA native plants to celebrate Point Blue Conservation Science’s 57th birthday. March 18th, 1965 is the day that we were incorporated as a non-profit conservation organization and embarked on our journey to conserve birds, wildlife, and ecosystems through science, partnerships, and outreach. Planting native plants and creating

Ecological restoration works for urban birds in San Francisco’s Presidio

While cities and towns have not historically been considered priorities for ecological restoration projects, the UN Decade effort explicitly calls for urban restoration. The Presidio Trust, the National Park Service, and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy were visionary in their pursuit of restoration in San Francisco’s Presidio, and since 2001 they have restored 78 acres.

Re-Balancing Act Making a Ranch Ecosystem More Resilient

Heather Bernikoff has been a changemaker in her community through the many roles she’s held—a volunteer leader on non-profit boards, a health educator, and an advocate for direct service programs, to name a few. Now on her ranch in the rolling foothills of the Central Sierra Nevada, she is effecting change on the land by

Science News: More drones for science? Yes!

Science Drones from Antarctica to CA Drones are fast becoming an important conservation tool. At Point Blue, we began using them to survey a colony of half a million penguins in Antarctica that we’ve been monitoring on foot since the early 1970s. That study is still active and proving to be successful in bringing a

Central Valley Science Super Stars!

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

A New Planting Palette for Sierra Meadows

Point Blue Conservation Science is excited to share a new climate-smart resource for Sierra meadow restoration: the Sierra Meadow Planting Palette Tool and Tool User Guide . The purpose of this tool is to help restoration practitioners plan for climate change by identifying plant species that have traits that will increase the likelihood that they

Carving Out Support for Conservation

By Lishka Arata, Senior Communications Coordinator When Melinda Whipplesmith Plank reached out to Point Blue last spring to ask if we were interested in an artist collaboration that would support our conservation work, our immediate answer was an enthusiastic, “Yes!” Millie, as she prefers to be called, is a woodblock print artist based out of

Science News: Guatemala, Spain, A Record Capture, and more

Building Capacity in Guatemala We are excited to welcome Guatemala as the 13th and most recent country to join the Migratory Shorebird Project! Initiated in 2011, the Migratory Shorebird Project is the largest ongoing coordinated survey of wintering shorebirds on the Pacific Coast of the Americas, and is a cooperative effort of conservation science organizations and

Science Tags: ecological restoration