Short-billed Dowitchers by Mick Thompson
Watch the video from our November 15, 2023 Program
"The Joy of Continuing Curiosity—Three Decades of Research in Ecology”
Presented by Dr. Rhonda L. Millikin , Ph.D., MSc., RPBio, ITA Horticulture
Rhonda is a semi-retired ecologist after 37 years with the Canadian Federal Government – Forestry Canada, then Environment and Climate Change Canada, followed by a return to school for Landscape Horticulture and Soil Science. She’s currently combining the 3 disciplines to develop an Ecosystem Sustainability approach to vineyard management.
The last time she came to the Olympic Peninsula and presented an OPAS program—over 30 years ago—she was developing what would become her Ph.D thesis and comprised the basis of 2 patents. She fused radar and acoustics to passively locate and identify night migrating birds in 3-dimensional space. She subsequently formed EchoTrack Inc. to apply her innovative technology to identify and conserve stopover sites for migrating birds and to recommend safer siting of wind turbines in proximity to migration flyways across North America and in South Africa.
Rhonda shared some key insights from her work on night bird migration and added current findings from her graduate students’ work on shorebird stopover flight behavior. She also sneaked in a few ideas from her vineyard research that we could apply to our landscaping on the Olympic Peninsula to help mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Click on the video below to watch.