Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 7 p.m.

Nina Karnovsky and Students  “Avian Conservation in Tanzania: Undergrad Bird Research with Eli Taub and Zora Beaty”

Pomona College students Zora Beaty’25 (on the left) and Eli Taub’25 (on the right) went to different areas of Tanzania last spring and designed and carried out bird conservation projects. Zora will present how she compared bird diversity between the Moyo Hill Community Forest and the Lake Manyara Airport in order to make recommendations about reducing bird-airplane collisions. Eli will discuss his findings from the 40 ethnoornithological interviews he conducted with people in Pemba Island which highlight the different ways ornithology takes place around the world and how local knowledge is critical for effective conservation.

Nina Karnovsky is a Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor at Pomona College where she teaches (as she puts it) “many different flavors of ecology” but really enjoys her Avian Ecology class. 

Thursday, December 5, 2024 at 7 pm Charlotte Chang “Do nature-based climate solutions deliver benefits to people and wildlife?”

Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) help fight climate change by protecting and restoring natural environments like forests and wetlands. While helping the climate, these projects can also affect wildlife and human communities. Currently, we don’t know if these impacts tend to be positive or negative. We also don’t know what types of impacts tend to occur. For instance, does improving rice farming to reduce methane emissions lead to more equal social relationships between people in rural communities? Does shifting livestock grazing to legume feedstock tend to benefit biodiversity? Over the past 30 years, research about NCS has grown exponentially. However, with over 2 million research papers to review, it’s extremely difficult for decision-makers to understand all the evidence and identify trade-offs versus synergies for NCS. Dr. Chang used machine learning to analyze these millions of research papers. This analysis identified 257,266 relevant studies that specifically discussed how NCS projects affected both nature and people. Her team created a world map showing where different NCS projects had more or less evidence and what potential effects they have. This map helps people make informed decisions about which climate projects to support in different areas, and which NCS actions require more research and where. Overall, her work makes it easier for stakeholders and organizations to choose climate projects that will have the most positive effects while avoiding unintended negative consequences.

Charlotte Chang is an assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Analysis at Pomona College whose research focuses on social-ecological
systems to improve conservation science and practice. She works with local community leaders, environmental practitioners, and academic colleagues to help find ways for nature and people to thrive using computational research.Her lab combines data science, quantitative ecology and field methods to study human-natural systems. Dr. Chang received her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University and did postdoctoral research at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at theUniv. of Tennessee, Knoxville and completed a research fellowship with TheNature Conservancy. She started in Claremont with her bachelor's degree atPomona College.

Thursday, January 2, 2025 at 7 p.m.
Brian Elliott - "A Winter Birding Trip Through Japan - From the Winter Snows of Hokkaido to the Sub-tropical Island of Okinawa

PVAS Conservation Director, Brian Elliott, will give a presentation on his two week birding trip with two friends and guide Gunnar Engblom in March 2022 to Japan. The trip took them from the winter snows of the northernmost island of Hokkaido with wintering cranes, including one of the rarest cranes in the world, the Red-crowned Crane. Wintering Steller's Sea Eagles and the Blakiston's Fish Owl, one of the largest owls in the world can be found on Hokkaido. Brian spent a few days in Tokyo visiting cultural sites as well as birding a few parks in the city. They then birded various other parts of the main island of Honshu including the Crane Sanctuary, Monkey Park, the island of Miyake, and finally the sub-tropical warmth of Okinawa. 

Brian worked as a geologist before a long career teaching high school

physics and environmental science. Retirement has allowed him to travel the
globe on many birding trips. He is an accomplished rock climber and wilderness adventurer and has enjoyed these activities in more than 25
countries and on all 7 continents.  In addition to leading birding outings for PVAS, he is also an outings leader for the San Gorgonio Chapter of the
Sierra Club. 

Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 7 p.m.
Elise Ferree - Wintering White-crowned Sparrows at the Bernard Field Station and Beyond

Elise Ferree is currently investigating the behavior of migratory white-crowned sparrows that migrate from Alaska to overwinter in southern
California. Her talk will highlight findings based on the past seven years of observations that examine how these sparrows return to and utilize the
Bernard Field Station as an overwintering site. She will also share some preliminary data comparing the return rates and behavior of white-crowned
sparrows overwintering in Claremont suburban neighborhoods. 

Dr. Elise Ferree teaches biology at the Department of Natural Sciences of Scripps and Pitzer Colleges. Her research focuses on behavioral ecology,
with wild populations of birds and spiders as study organisms. Elise is also interested in nutrition and public health, as well as sustainability and
urban ecology of plants and animals. She attended The College of William and Mary, Wake Forest University for her MS, received her PhD at UC Santa Cruz and was a postdoctoral associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Thursday, March 6, 2025 at 7 pm

Dr. Allison Schultz – “Flashy Feathers to Microscopic Mechanisms: How and Why Birds are Colorful”

Join Associate Curator of Ornithology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as she delves into the world of feathers and their colors. During her talk, she will discuss how different forces have shaped the multitude of colors and patterns that we observe today (including some that humans can’t see!) and describe some of her current work on the mechanisms underlying the great diversity of colors in birds. She will end her talk with an example of how environmental pollution is impacting bird feathers.

Dr. Allison Shultz is Associate Curator of the Ornithology Department at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. With her research, she seeks to understand the evolution of bird diversity, focusing on two major areas: how birds are responding to human-caused environmental changes, and how and why bird colors evolve.

Dr. Shultz received her PhD from Harvard University, MS from San Diego State University, and BA from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to her research, Dr. Shultz is passionate about increasing diversity, inclusion, access and equity in the sciences, and inspiring a love of nature in everyone. She grew up in Southern California and has done fieldwork in various places in the US, Mongolia, and Colombia. Website: http://allisonshultz.com

Thursday, April 3, 2025 at 7 pm
Jennifer Chebahtah, CalBG "Planting for Birds"

Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 7 p.m.

Dr. Suzanne Thompson “Protecting Burrowing Owls in the Pomona Valley: The Story and Fate of the Ontario Airport Owls”

The PVAS Burrowing Owl (BUOW) Project, led by Suzanne Thompson, the BUOW Committee, and PVAS members have fought for years to protect 200 acres of prime owl habitat east of the Ontario Airport. The Airport and the city of Ontario chose big warehouse dollars over small owls and the fields were destroyed. Pitzer Professor Anne Kaneko will introduce and screen her fascinating short documentary, Operation Owl, showing dramatic footage of the owls before their homes were lost. But what happened to the owls after that? Dr. Thompson has reviewed hundreds of pages of public records that detail the fate of the owls after being removed from their home. She will tell the story of the relocated Ontario owls and the current status of the owls in the Pomona Valley, including both the promising and the less encouraging prospects.

Suzanne Thompson received a PhD in Psychology from UCLA and is Emerita Professor of Psychology at Pomona College where she taught and conducted research on the intersection of psychology, health, and medical care, as well as environmental psychology.

Thursday June 5 at

6:00 pm  Annual End of Year Meeting
We start an hour early at 6:00 with a light dinner, elections, the fun and excitement of the silent auction and a twin bill of a photo showcase and a photo challenge