Santa Barbara Audubon Society’s executive director Sarah Otterstrom will be the featured speaker at the society’s next program, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25, in Farrand Hall at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 2559 Puesta del Sol. The event is free to attend. Doors open at 7 p.m.
Many of Central California’s migratory birds winter in tropical areas where intensive agriculture and coastal development pose a threat to their survival. Paso Pacifico is a Ventura-based nonprofit that works to protect these ecosystems in western Central America.
Otterstrom will share stories of the challenges and rewards of practicing conservation in the region. She’ll talk about Paso Pacifico’s migratory bird program (including its MoSI bird-banding stations and Willow Flycatcher monitoring), and the organization’s efforts to transform interactions between local people and birds through a slingshot-for-binoculars exchange and junior ranger programs.
Otterstrom founded the nonprofit Paso Pacifico in 2005 in response to the urgent need to protect Nicaragua’s coastal dry tropical forests, where she did her graduate research. Today the organization works in both El Salvador and Nicaragua, two countries where conservation investments are otherwise very limited.
Otterstrom, who lives in Ojai, holds a Ph.D. in ecology from UC Davis and an undergraduate biology degree from the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica. She first fell in love with birds when she worked as a naturalist tour guide in Costa Rica in the early 1990s.
For more information, visit www.SantaBarbaraAudubon.org. Direct questions about Santa Barbara Audubon Society programs to Publicity@SantaBarbaraAudubon.org. The Santa Barbara Audubon Society, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
— Alexandra Loos for Santa Barbara Audubon Society.