Phalaropes in the Big City: Can Human Habitats Help Save the Birds of America’s Saline Lakes?
Thursday, February 12
7:00-9:00 PM
Speaker: Nathan Van Schmidt
Event is free. Register HERE for this speaker series.

Topic:
Wilson’s Phalaropes and Red-necked Phalaropes are exceptionally unique shorebirds that specialize in hypersaline habitats. Nathan will discuss the challenges facing phalaropes within the San Francisco Bay and across their intercontinental migration. He will discuss monitoring data within the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, how saline lakes like California’s Mono Lake have declined under the pressure of unstainable water withdrawal and climate change and key research questions and next steps that the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory (SFBBO) plans to address these conservation science needs.

Speaker Bio:
Nathan Van Schmidt is the Director of Regional Strategies at SFBBO. He obtained his B.S. from University of Wisconsin – Madison and his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley. He currently leads monitoring and research on non-breeding waterbird guilds, colonial waterbird breeding activity, waterbird disease and abatement research, and is the Lead Author of the Central Coast Regional Report for California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment.

Photo Credit: Don Dvorak