Short-billed Dowitchers flying — Photo: Mick Thompson
“The Joy of Continuing Curiosity—Three Decades of Research in Ecology”
Presented by Rhonda L. Millikin, Ph.D., MSc., RPBio, ITA Horticulture
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 7 p.m.
Rainshadow Hall, Dungeness River Nature Center
No charge to attend.
Rhonda L. Millikin
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.
For our Audubon program, she will share some key insights from her work on night bird migration and add current findings from her graduate students’ work on shorebird stopover flight behavior. She will also sneak 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.
It will be great to welcome a longtime friend and distinguished scientist back to our midst for an informative and entertaining evening. Please mark it on your calendars and join us.