Achievements

Janelle Chojnacki

Wildlife

Wildlife graduate student Janelle Chojnacki has received a grant from The Nuttall Ornithological Club to fund her research into the foraging behavior of common ravens, and their predator impact on the western snowy plover, a federally threatened bird. The project aims to address the causal factors related to increased raven abundance and proximity to plover nesting areas to provide conservation practitioners with useful information for identifying key areas to focus mitigation efforts. Results will be applicable to other prey species throughout ravens’ range in North America.

Chojnacki received the award working in collaboration with her graduate advisor, Dr. Barbara Clucas.

Frank Fogarty

Wildlife

Frank Fogarty (Wildlife) published a new paper demonstrating that observational data can be useful for predicting songbird nest sites in Ibis. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ibi.13020

Micaela Szykman Gunther

Wildlife

HSU Wildlife Professor Dr. Micaela Szykman Gunther has received a grant from the Humboldt County Fish and Game Commission to support ongoing research into the diets of two local at-risk species, the Humboldt marten and fisher, and their predators. The project aims to analyze diet data to help inform land management practices that may benefit the two species, and to understand predator impact that will further help land managers and conservationists.

Project collaborators include Dr. Katie Moriarty (National Council for Air and Stream Improvement), graduate students Alyssa Roddy and Erika Anderson, and two undergraduate students.

Frank Fogarty

Wildlife

Frank Fogarty (Wildlife) published a new paper on utilizing point count data to estimate the abundance of mobile animals in Ecological Indicators. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X21008359

Allison Huysman, Matt Johnson

Wildlife

Allison Huysman and Matt Johnson (Wildlife) published a paper entitled, “Multi-year nest box occupancy and short-term resilience to wildfire disturbance by barn owls in a vineyard agroecosystem” in the journal Ecosphere.

Dane St. George, Matt Johnson

Wildlife

Dane St. George and Matt Johnson published a manuscript entitled, "Effects of habitat on prey delivery rate and prey species composition of breeding barn owls in winegrape vineyards" in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & the Environment

Jose Rodriguez, Ho Yi Wan

Wildlife

Undergraduate Jose Rodriguez received a $5,000 starter grant given to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color from Save the Redwoods League. This grant will be used to initiate the Condors And Redwoods Ecological Research (CARER) project, which aims to study California condors that are soon to be released into the wild in northern California. Jose will be working with mentor Dr. Ho Yi Wan on the project.

Xerónimo Castañeda, Allison Huysman, Matthew D Johnson

Wildlife

Former graduate students Xerónimo Castañeda, Allison Huysman, and their advisor Matt Johnson published a paper in Ornithological Applications entitled, "Barn Owls select uncultivated habitats for hunting in a winegrape growing region of California."

Hilary Cosby and Micaela Szykman Gunther

Wildlife

Former graduate student Hilary Cosby had her thesis research published in the Journal of Mammalogy, co-authored with mentor Dr. Micaela Szykman Gunther in the Department of Wildlife. The paper is entitled: "Variation in diet of river otters by season and aquatic community."

Mark Colwell, Chelsea Polevy and Hannah LeWinter

Wildlife

Mark Colwell, Chelsea Polevy and Hannah LeWinter published the last of three papers summarizing the importance of Humboldt Bay to shorebirds along the Pacific America’s Flyway. Their work, funded by Audubon California, shows that the bay hosts a diverse (52 species) and abundant (~850,000 individuals) assemblage of mostly sandpipers and plovers rear-round, justifying its designation as a site of international importance under the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. See their work at: https://www.waderstudygroup.org/article/14584/