Mason Avelar is a birder, artist, and recent graduate pursuing further studies in conservation biology. Born and raised in Southern California, he witnessed the devastating effects of the 2017 Thomas fire firsthand, including the months of smoke and poor air quality that followed. He understands the importance of community science projects for monitoring our changing world and hopes that Project Phoenix will contribute to a better understanding of bird conservation in areas affected by smoke.

Mason is the superstar volunteer who designed our incredible logo for Project Phoenix! Check out more of Mason’s art and photography on Twitter and iNaturalist.

Carrie Brown-Kornarens is a birder, wildlife enthusiast, ceramicist, motion graphics designer, organic gardener, and permaculturalist. Although, she grew up on multiple military bases in the US and abroad, she has lived in Southern California for most of her life. She has been a volunteer with the LA Raptor study for a couple years, and is continuing to learn about birds daily. Carrie lives in the hills of Los Feliz nestling Griffith Park, and her yard is a wildlife habitat. The area she lives in is a high fire zone, and she’s looking forward to volunteering with Project Phoenix to observe the affects smoke has on birds.

Connect with Carrie via her Instagram and her iNaturalist!

Patrick Gavit became very interested in community science as a result of a collaboration with Dr. Greg Pauly and Dr. Adam Clause in the herpetology department at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. One of his iNaturalist posts featured a non-native African Five-Lined Skink! Dr. Pauly reached out to Patrick, and together, they started a 3-year collaboration to understand the dynamics of the skink population in the neighborhood. Along with Dr. Clause, the three of them worked to eradicate the skinks, out of concern that they might cause the extirpation of native lizards in the neighborhood, or that they could spread into the local foothills. Patrick is very happy to report that the eradication was successful and there have not been any sightings of an African Five-Lined Skink in over three years. (Congratulations, Patrick!) Working on this project gave him an appreciation of the value of community science, and he looks forward to participating in other projects like Project Phoenix!

You can connect with Patrick on his iNaturalist.

By day, Corinna Bechko is a fossil preparator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. By night, she is a writer, mostly of comics. Corinna’s background is in zoology, fueled by a lifelong love of prehistoric creatures. Naturally, she adores dinosaurs, including birds! Corinna was excited to join Project Phoenix because it not only fit into her busy schedule, but also because she believes in the power of community science, and especially enjoys initiatives that focus on urban wildlife. She emphasizes that “the wild” is not some far-off place, separate from us, but one that is all around us and worth spending time in.

“You can’t protect what you don’t understand,” she says, adding that we can’t hope to understand what we don’t bother to observe. “Just getting out there in a city park with a pair of binoculars lets other people know there's something interesting going on. That might be the nudge they need to look, too.”

Corinna has been happy that Project Phoenix provides her, her partner, and their dog the nudge to escape to the park once a week, particularly as she prepares for the promotion of her new book, The Space Between, a science fiction tale that takes place aboard an interstellar colony ship. A large part of her book explores the choices that were made in the selection of the plants and animals that were brought on board the ship – each species was chosen because someone cared enough about them to make sure they were saved. It is Corinna’s hope that community science initiatives like Project Phoenix encourage more people to begin to engage with, and care about, the wilderness around them.

You can connect with Corinna and learn more about her work in science and science fiction on her Instagram (@corinnabechko).

Boaz learned about Project Phoenix through his engagement with community science at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Boaz was excited to join this project because he loves birding and is passionate about wildlife conservation. Boaz says that before joining Project Phoenix, he had not thought much about how wildfires and smoke impacted birds, and this experience has motivated him to learn more about how changing wildfires are affecting California’s ecosystems.

Boaz is also a phenomenal wildlife photographer. We featured some of his amazing artwork in a recent edition of our newsletter. To check out more of Boaz’s photography, head over to his Instagram (@waspmania) or iNaturalist page!

Owen became involved with Project Phoenix when he attended the Open Wetlands event and bird walk hosted by the Nature Nexus Institute and Los Angeles Audubon. After meeting our Program Director, Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, Owen realized that Project Phoenix would align with his passion for climate solutions and environmental research, as well as his love for photographing birds!

Owen is currently studying Applied Physics at Loyola Marymount University, and he enjoys getting outside and exploring the outdoors with his camera when taking a break from his studies. He keeps a life list of species he’s seen and enjoys finding new species when he goes hiking and camping. He loves getting to see hummingbirds, shorebirds, and owls, and he is especially taken with Belted Kingfishers.

Owen was no stranger to the impacts of wildfire on wildlife before he joined Project Phoenix. Owen recently collaborated on a research project that correlated wildfire damage with San Joaquin Kit Fox habitat compatibility in the Carrizo Plains. You can read his team’s study here!

To connect with Owen, and to see more of his incredible photography, check out his Instagram (@odaultonphotos) or visit his website.

Laura – a former elementary school teacher, now stay-at-home parent and graduate student getting her master’s to become a Teacher Librarian – was no stranger to community science when she joined Project Phoenix. She first became involved with SuperProject 4 in 2020, through the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and from there met Miguel Ordeñana, and joined the Backyard Bat Survey. Laura, her family, and her neighbors were all shocked to learn that four different species of bats are regularly detected in their backyard by their Backyard Bat Survey sensor.

A lover of the outdoors, Laura enjoys exploring all the amazing wildlife in Long Beach, like the two Great Horned Owls who spend time in her backyard! She loves that community science projects allow her to spend more time outdoors, learn more about urban wildlife, and contribute to scientific discovery.

You can connect with Laura on iNaturalist!

Alex is a 4th year Ecology, Behavior and Evolution (EBE) Major at UCLA. He works with Mountain Yellow-Legged Frogs, helping with captive breeding, behavioral experiments, and their reintroduction to the wild. He recently joined Dr. Pamela Yeh’s lab, working to find the nests of Dark-eyed Juncos and observe their behavior. He hopes to become involved with mist netting and live bird processing during the next field season.

Alex first became involved in birding this past spring as a way to relax and have new experiences. His first birding outing was with the Bruin Birding Club, on a field trip to Palos Verdes and the South Bay. Once he used his first pair of binoculars to watch pelicans fly overhead, he was hooked! His birding adventures took him across the UCLA campus and Riverside, but his birding really picked up when he began his field quarter with the UC Natural Reserve System. His field quarter took him across California and allowed him to bird and hit his life list goal of 200 species by the end of the quarter! It was during this program that Alex learned about and joined Project Phoenix. Whenever he had cell phone reception, Alex worked on submitting checklists from the various reserves he visited.

Connect more with Alex on his Instagram (@alexanderyan0106) and eBird (AYANMC244).

Moses first read about Project Phoenix on Instagram, in a post by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC), and he thought it was pretty cool. Later, he heard Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot, our program director, share more about Project Phoenix and realized it was a community science project he could join. Moses thought volunteering would be a wonderful opportunity to engage directly in research and learn more about the project’s findings.

Currently, Moses is a research assistant in NHMLAC’s UNLAB (Understanding Nature and Los Angeles Biodiversity), a program that aims to help underrepresented post-baccalaureate scholars gain research experience and skills. He is collaborating with and mentored by Dr. Allison Shultz, an advisor and researcher with Project Phoenix, and co-mentored by Olivia. Together, Moses, Allison, and Olivia are working on an interdisciplinary project that leverages museum specimens to learn more about air pollution impacts on birds. Moses will be measuring black carbon accumulation on bird specimens collected over the last century in Southern California. His study will follow the same methods as a recent investigation of black carbon deposition on bird specimens in the Midwest. This project will allow NHMLAC researchers to evaluate atmospheric pollution prior to the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) in 1970 – the museum's collections predate the founding of the E.P.A. and include bird specimens that are well over 130 years old! Stay tuned for updates on this exciting project.

Outside of research, Moses loves photographing and filming birds and really any other cool wildlife, from jumping spiders to coyotes to grunion. He loves learning about the biodiversity that exists all around us. There’s always so much to learn and so much that goes unnoticed; Moses loves to help highlight that, and he believes that Project Phoenix is a great way to expand community involvement in birding!

You can connect with Moses on his Instagram (average__moe) and his iNaturalist!

Bettina Eastman is a wildlife biologist, naturalist, insect enthusiast, swimmer, seamstress, and jewelry maker who generally enjoys being creative. Her love of nature began as a child while listening to her mother regale stories of her own childhood with long walks to school through the woods of Europe. Bettina could visualize the rabbits foraging in the snow along the road to the train station as her mother described them. Growing up in Southern California she did not have a long trek to school, yet she was always aware of nature around her, even though she did not really study it until later in life.

Her interest in birds started by accident while fishing along a stream outside of Bishop. She saw a bird flit by and wondered what species it was. After receiving binoculars for Christmas, she started looking more closely at birds and has been studying birds for almost 30 years now. Her love of birds led to exciting fieldwork, and she eventually went back to school, earning a degree in Biology with an emphasis on Zoology.

Bettina has been a volunteer and community scientist for as long as she has been birding. A long-time participant in many Christmas Bird Counts, she is now a compiler for Sea and Sage Audubon’s Coastal Christmas Bird Count Circle and manages a phenology study called BirdSeasons CA. The data for this behavioral study is entered into a national database called “Nature’s Notebook,” which is part of the National Phenology Network based at the University of Arizona. She also does outreach for Orange County Parks, California State Parks, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), to name a few. For Bettina, educating the public about the risks wildlife face is an everyday conversation that she hopes will light a spark of interest in others to care for our planet. Having participated in many different community science projects, it was an easy decision for her to add her name to the list of volunteers for Project Phoenix. She looks forward to gaining a better understanding of how smoke and air pollution impacts birds and hopes that some of this knowledge will also shed light on how birds will respond to air pollution created by the drying up of the Salton Sea.

You can connect with Bettina on her Instagram (@bettinaenaturehb) and her iNaturalist (bettina-eastman)!

Christy’s birding journey began about two years ago, when she and her family moved from a first-floor apartment to a second-floor apartment. For her balcony, she bought both a hummingbird feeder and a seed feeder, and she was soon mesmerized by the wide variety of birds that visited. She now had the perfect place to watch birds! This inspired her to download the Merlin app and spend hours identifying the birds on her balcony. She now loves to spend early Saturday mornings on her balcony while everyone else sleeps, just her, her phone, and the birds. When Christy heard about Project Phoenix, she was very excited to join and begin her surveys. She believes that it is incredibly important to learn about local wildlife and spend time connecting to nature. She loved that Project Phoenix allowed her to do that while helping researchers learn more about the impacts of wildfires on our feathered neighbors.

You can connect with Christy on Instagram (@harleychris77)!