In her presentation on drought and migratory birds in California’s Central Valley, Rachel will provide an overview of Central Valley wetlands and their importance for the Pacific Flyway, explain how drought is impacting the Valley’s bird habitats, and discuss actions we can take to ensure a more drought-resilient future.

Rachel Zwillinger bio

As the Water Policy Advisor for Defenders’ California Program, Rachel focuses on protecting the fish and wildlife that depend upon California’s waterways and wetlands. Among other priorities, she works to ensure that wetlands in the Central Valley receive sufficient water to support birds as they migrate along the Pacific Flyway, and strives to protect endangered salmon and other native species that depend upon the San Francisco Bay-Delta and upstream habitats.

Before joining Defenders of Wildlife, Rachel worked for three years as a litigation fellow for Altshuler Berzon LLP and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Prior to her fellowship, Rachel served as a law clerk to Judge John T. Noonan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Marilyn Huff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Rachel received a J.D. and M.S. from Stanford University, where she graduated Order of the Coif, and received her undergraduate degree in geosciences from Princeton University.

International Bird guide, naturalist and photographer, Benny Jacobs-Schwartz will share his dazzling bird photos, captivating videos, and animated story-telling to bring a slice of the tropics to California.
Delving into topics of migration, tropical speciation, and bio-diversity, this media rich journey will share some of the fascinating and unique birds that inhabit the new-world tropics.
Sure to both educate and entertain, this presentation will certainly leave you with a deeper understanding of tropical ecology, and knowledge about where some of our backyard birds spend their winters!

Speaker Bio:

Benny Isaac Jacobs-Schwartz owns and operates a bird guiding business and lifestyle brand called BIRDS by BIJS (pronounced Bee-jus). Working seasonally as a naturalist guide, expedition trip leader, and international bird guide, Benny works in a variety of locations. Most recently bringing him to such exotic places like coastal Alaska, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Ecuadorian cloud forest.

Seasonally Benny or BIJS, is based in Los Angeles, where he leads public and private birding adventures to urban hotspots. He is also a passionate photographer, specializing in birds. He uses his impressive collection of content to leverage his prolific social media presence. Benny hopes his love of the natural world will inspire others to conserve the open spaces around them and look up more often from their phones!

Biologists have studied the charismatic wood duck for well over a century. What more could we possibly learn? As it turns out, quite a bit. New technology is revealing a rich and complex social underworld that is proving to be quite astonishing. We are employing automatic logging devices (passive integrated transponders, or PIT tags) that record every nest site a female visits, and population-wide genetic analyses of all breeding females and their offspring to follow the breeding behavior and entire life histories of wood ducks on several sites in California. We are focusing on a particularly curious nesting behavior whereby females lay eggs in the nests of other females in the same population (termed conspecific brood parasitism or CBP). Females in a wide variety of bird species lay their eggs in the nests of other conspecifics but despite its widespread occurrence the factors that promote parasitic nesting behavior remain poorly understood, in part because the sneaky parasitic females are rarely identified, but also because the information needed to assess the possible benefits of this behavior are often lacking. Are these females friends or foe? Does this behavior add or detract from the survival of females and their young, or the sustainability of the population? Our studies are providing some new insights and, in some cases, surprising us with the wide range of behavioral interactions among females in this enigmatic species of cavity-nesting duck.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. John Eadie is a Professor and the Dennis G. Raveling Waterfowl Chair in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, University of California Davis. He joined the faculty at UC Davis in 1995 from Zoology University of British Columbia, where he completed by PhD degree. His research interests include the ecology, conservation and management of waterfowl and wetlands. His current work focuses on the management and conservation of wetland habitats, breeding waterfowl (mallards and wood ducks) in California, and linking ecological theory to wildlife management and conservation. He uses a combination of experimental and observational field studies, molecular genetic techniques in the lab, and population modeling approaches in his research.

As spring approaches, our wintering sparrows prepare to leave and breeding species start to arrive, making it an ideal time to see a wide diversity of species.  Part of the challenge of identifying sparrows is recognizing their generic and species specific traits, including behavior and physical characteristics.  This presentation will give an overview of a handful of similar species that share common habitat but have differences of natural history, behavior, and field marks that help tell them apart.  Some of the similar species that will be discussed include Chipping and Brewer’s; White-crowned, White-throated, and Golden-crowned; Savannah and Vesper, and Sagebrush and Bell’s Sparrows.  

Speaker Bio:

Homer Hansen grew up in Willcox, Arizona surrounded by Sandhill Cranes in winter and Cassin’s Sparrows in summer.  Homer has a passion for sharing bird watching with others and is a regular field trip leader for several festivals and has served as chairman of the Wings Over Willcox Birding & Nature Festival for nearly 20 years.  Homer loves working with youths and co-founded the Sulphur Springs Valley Young Birders Club and the associated Arizona Young Birder’s Camp, non-profits dedicated to educating youths about birds (if not for COVID, 2021 would have been the 6th annual camp).  He also instructs workshops on sparrows, raptors, flycatchers, warblers, birding by ear, and bird ecology, including: the Lifelong Learning courses for the Tucson Audubon Society, the Southwestern Sparrows IFO for the American Birding Association, and educational workshops for the Western Field Ornithologists (WFO) conferences.  Homer is a life member of the WFO, Cooper Ornithological Society (COS), and Wilson Ornithological Society (WOS), and just completed two terms with the WFO board as chairman of the Student Programs Committee.

The Return of Gray Wolves to California

Once common throughout much of North America, the gray wolf (Canis lupus) was driven to localized extinction in most areas of the contiguous United States by the mid-1930s through bounties and wildly successful predator control efforts. The last wild gray wolf in California was shot in Lassen County in 1924. 

Flash forward to late December 2011, when a young male wolf known as OR-7 entered our state from Oregon, making him the first known wild wolf in the Golden State in nearly 90 years. In Summer 2015, news spread that California’s first resident wolf family, dubbed the Shasta Pack for the massive dormant volcano near where they were discovered, had settled into eastern Siskiyou County. The following summer, we learned about the Lassen Pack, which straddles the Lassen/Plumas county line and has produced pups every year since 2017. Yet another pair of wolves, known as the Whaleback Pack in Siskiyou County, produced seven pups in 2021. Wolves are no longer merely passing through; they’re settling in and making themselves at home here in our state.

This presentation will provide an overview of gray wolf natural history, ecological role and current distribution and population in North America and here in California. The historic reintroduction efforts in the northern Rockies to bring wolves back from the brink of extinction will be discussed, as will implications for wolf recovery in the western states with an emphasis on the importance of coexistence and moving beyond myths.

Speaker Bio:

Pamela Flick is the California Program Director for Defenders of Wildlife based in Sacramento, where she engages on a variety of issues statewide including gray wolf recovery, responsible renewable energy planning and development, forest resilience and fire restoration, and advancing conservation of imperiled species and natural communities.

Pam is a founding member of the Pacific Wolf Coalition and has served as an advisor to the Department of Fish and Wildlife in development of the Conservation Plan for Gray Wolves in California and the Department’s wolf conflict compensation pilot program. She currently serves on Sierra Forest Legacy’s advisory board, the Southern Sierra Prescribed Fire Council advisory committee, and the Southern Sierra Nevada Fisher Working Group.

Prior to joining Defenders in 2005, Pam worked to permanently protect public lands and rivers throughout the Golden State in various roles within the California Wild Heritage Campaign, Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign and at Friends of the River.

Pam graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Sacramento with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and a minor in Biological Sciences. She also holds associate degrees in Biology and Liberal Studies from Sierra College and is a Certified California Naturalist through the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She is a third-generation Californian and hails from Mariposa.

Program Description

Speaker Bio:

Dan Airola is a Wildlife Biologist and Ornithologist,  who has lived in the Central Valley since 1985. Dan conducts research and conservation efforts for birds of concern in northern California, often with a community science component. He began studies of Yellow-billed Magpies during 2020 after discovering that almost no ecological study of the species had occurred in the Central Valley. His other research and conservation program species include the Tricolored Blackbird, Purple Martin, Swainson’s Hawk, Osprey, and migratory and wintering songbirds. He is a Board member and Conservation Chair of the Central Valley Bird Club, and Editor of the journal Central Valley Birds. His recent book on 30 years of Purple Martin research and management is available at cvbirds.org.