[audubon-news] AUDUBON SEABIRD RESTORATION PROGRAM NAMES HERZ FELLOW
- From: "BIANCHI, John" <JBIANCHI@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <audubon-news@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,<chapter-communicator@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 16:11:26 -0400
Contact: Steve Kress
skress@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:skress@xxxxxxxxxxx>
607/257-7308
AUDUBON SEABIRD RESTORATION PROGRAM
NAMES FIRST HERZ FELLOW
Peruvian Biologist Carlos Zavalaga to Supervise
Audubon Field Station as Part of Unique Fellowship
Ithaca, NY, May 19, 2003 - The National Audubon Society has named Carlos
Zavalaga of Lima, Peru the first recipient of the Josephine Daneman Herz
International Seabird Fellowship. The Fellowship, created in 2003, honors
Josephine Herz of Green Valley, Arizona, in tribute to her lifelong interest in
bird conservation.
Carlos Zavalaga, presently a graduate student at the University of North
Carolina in Wilmington, will participate this summer in Audubon's Seabird
Restoration Program on the Maine coast, where he will supervise Audubon's field
station on Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge in outer Penobscot Bay.
This summer the Seabird Restoration Program is celebrating 30 years of
protecting waterbird colonies on the Maine coast. The program employs 17
interns and 25 volunteers at seven Maine coast islands. These sanctuaries
provide habitat for 19 species of colonial nesting water birds, including 95
percent of Maine's Atlantic Puffins, 84 percent of its terns, 63 percent of its
Razorbills, and Maine's only mixed colony of ibis, egrets, and herons. The
techniques developed to restore and protect these colonies are now used
worldwide.
While working at Seal Island, Zavalaga will learn techniques that have restored
puffins and terns to this 100-acre refuge. He will work with Dr. Stephen
Kress, Director of the Seabird Restoration Program and other Audubon staff. The
goal of the new fellowship is to teach biologists from developing countries
restoration techniques that they can use to help rare and endangered seabirds
in their home countries.
Zavalaga received his B.S. degree in biology and chemistry from the Universidad
Peruana Cayetano Heredia, and has since studied seabirds and marine mammals in
Peru for the past ten years. From 1993 to 1997 he studied the endangered
Humboldt Penguin at Punta San Juan, a marine reserve in southern Peru in
collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He also collected
information on the breeding biology of Inca Terns and Peruvian Pelicans; the
diet of Guanay Cormorants; and the population size of Red-legged cormorants. He
also conducted studies of maximum diving depth of Peruvian Diving-petrels and
the nesting ecology of Peruvian Terns. In 1997, he completed his undergraduate
thesis on the breeding ecology of Inca Terns.
In 1999, Zavalaga participated in the IX Peruvian Antarctic expedition,
sighting and counting seabirds and marine mammals at sea. After returning from
Antarctica, he received a short-term scholarship from the National Park Zoo and
Smithsonian Institution to analyze the Humboldt Penguin Project data in
Washington, DC. He was then accepted into the Department of Biological
Sciences, at the University of North Carolina and began his Master degree
research in 2001, studying the foraging ecology of Blue-footed boobies in
northern Peru under the supervision of his major professor, Dr. Steve Emslie.
He will complete his M.S. degree this year and will continue working toward his
Ph.D. focusing on the use of seabirds as predictors of the health of fish
stocks in the Peruvian Humboldt current ecosystem. He has published ten papers
in scientific journals on the ecology and conservation of Peruvian seabirds.
Audubon is dedicated to protecting birds and other wildlife and the habitat
that supports them. Our national network of community-based nature centers and
chapters, scientific and educational programs, and advocacy on behalf of areas
sustaining important bird populations, engage millions of people of all ages
and backgrounds in positive conservation experiences.
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