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ONLINE: Spring Audubon Talk—Birds: Coast and Climate
April 22, 2021 , 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Pre-registration is required by 12 p.m. CDT Wednesday, April 21st, and space is limited.
Registration is now closed. Check out our other upcoming events here.
While this is a free event, please support our work if you are able and make a tax-deductible donation at alaudubon.org/give.
In 2020, the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico experienced an unprecedented hurricane season with ten of the thirty named storms, formed in the Atlantic basin, making landfall in the region. The threat of increased frequency and severity of storm events is only one of many issues that coastal ecosystems, including coastal birds, face in the wake of climate change. Join Alabama Audubon’s Coastal Biologist, Sabrina Cobb, as she facilitates this important conversation with researchers from across the Gulf Coast on how climate change is impacting coastal systems and the birds that rely on them for this special Earth Day event.
If you are a member of Alabama Audubon, please plan to stay on after the talk for our Annual Membership Meeting, including voting on new board members and the presentation of this year’s Yellowhammer Award. The meeting will conclude by 8 p.m. CDT. View the 2021–22 proposed board slate here.
Registration: To register, click on the button above. If you’re not an Alabama Audubon member and don’t yet have a username and password, simply click the “X” on the pop up and fill out the basic form. If you do have a login, please use it as this helps us tremendously on our end! You should receive an automated email upon registering.
Please note, you will receive a separate email with the Zoom webinar instructions once registration closes. You’ll need the link or webinar ID and password from this email to join the meeting. In the event the link does not work for you, you may need to go to the Zoom website and manually enter the webinar ID and password. Please double check your email and make sure it’s a valid email address prior to completing your registration. We’ve had several kick-backs when sending the Zoom meeting instructions out to registrants, and you won’t be able to join the webinar without this information. Thanks!
Questions? Email the Programs Assistant.
About the panel: We are excited to have five panelists representing each of the Gulf Coast states.
Dr. Abby Darrah joined Audubon Mississippi in March 2017. She first became interested in birds while attending college at Ohio University, thanks to an ornithology class that included mist-netting and a multi-day field trip to South Carolina. She moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she got her master’s degree and then PhD in biology. She studied king rail habitat use and distribution for her master’s project, and the behavior and ecology of mixed-species flocks in Amazonian Ecuador for her PhD dissertation. She worked as a postdoc at the University of Arizona and at the State University of New York–College of Environmental Science and Forestry developing a decision support tool for beach managers to use when deciding whether or not to use nest exclosures for piping plover conservation.
Owen Fitzsimmons is the Webless Migratory Game Bird Program Leader for Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. This unique position oversees statewide management for a wide variety of species that include doves, cranes, rails, gallinules, snipes, and woodcocks. His previous experience includes seven years of coastal bird conservation work with the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program, management of a private game ranch in south Texas, and short-term positions with the Texas Forest Service, Ducks Unlimited, and others. He earned a BS and MS in Range and Wildlife Management from Texas A&M University–Kingsville. His passion for conservation, birds, and all things outdoors has led him to volunteer with youth outdoor camps, youth hunting programs, and serving several years as president of the Coastal Bend Audubon chapter.
Dr. Amy Hunter earned her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Birmingham-Southern College and her PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Alabama. Dr. Hunter’s dissertation research, completed at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, focused on the ecology of salt marshes on the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coasts. She serves as Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Restoration Coordinator for the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. In that role, she works to ensure that Alabama’s DWH restoration efforts across all DWH funding streams represent a cohesive and coordinated approach to enhancing and restoring Alabama’s myriad natural resources and diverse coastal habitats. Among the most rewarding of those projects is Alabama’s Coastal Bird Stewardship Program led by Alabama Audubon.
Juita Martinez is a fourth year environmental and evolutionary biology PhD candidate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She earned a BS in Zoology with a minor in wildlife from Humboldt State University. Her current research focuses on Louisana’s brown pelican population, better known as #DinosaurFloofs on her social media pages. Coastal Louisiana has been at the forefront of restoration activity since the 1990s and her research aims to better understand the impacts of these human-caused habitat changes on the wildlife that utilize these spaces. She also works to uplift and advocate for increased representation in STEM. As co-organizer of #BlackBirdersWeek and various public talks, she uses her platform to encourage the world to recognize that Black and People of Color occupy every space possible.
Dr. Ken Meyer, who received his BS in Zoology from the University of Maine and his PhD in Zoology/Behavioral Ecology from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), has studied the conservation biology of birds in Florida and beyond since the 1980s, beginning with his research on swallow-tailed kites, which continues to this day. After serving as a Post-doctoral Associate and then Research Associate at the University of Florida from 1988 to 1992, he conducted studies of red-cockaded woodpeckers and the bird communities of south Florida pinelands for the National Park Service in Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. In 1997, Ken co-founded Avian Research Conservation Institute and soon branched out to other research challenges on a broader range of species.
FAQ’s:
I did not receive the email with the Zoom meeting instructions. Please double-check the email address you enter when registering for the online event as that is where the instructions will be sent (once registration closes). You may need to add us to your email provider’s safe sender list in the event it goes to spam. Also, please contact us by the morning of the event so that we have time to address your issue as generally you should have received the email right after registration closes.
The link doesn’t appear to be working. You may need to go to the Zoom website (https://zoom.us) and manually enter the webinar ID and password. Also, wait until just a couple of minutes before the meeting is supposed to begin to try to enter the meeting. It will not work if you try to join the meeting half an hour before it’s scheduled to begin, for instance. You can also check to make sure your computer meets the system requirements by clicking here.
Will this be recorded, and will I have the ability to view them later? We will be recording this session to make available on our website and Vimeo page.
Is there a waiting list? We do not have waiting lists for our online events at this time.