Researchers

Dr. Steve Beissinger and Jerry Tecklin began to collaborate on the Black Rail project in the late 1990’s. Several graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the Beissinger lab have since conducted research on the Black Rail project over the years, in addition to numerous field assistants.

Steve Beissinger is Professor of Conservation Biology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Beissinger conducts research on conservation biology, behavioral ecology and population biology.  He and his students have studied a variety of taxa but most of the work is with birds, especially endangered and tropical species.  Their research often combines field work with the use of models of population viability and other techniques.  Dr. Beissinger has worked extensively with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and state agencies.

Jerry Tecklin was among the first researchers to discover the Black Rail population in the Sierra foothills while working as a field ecologist at the University of California Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center in 1994. He has since devoted his energies to investigating the distribution, ecology, and behavior of Black Rails and is the manager of the seasonal Black Rail field crew. Jerry lives near Grass Valley, California, where he also finds time to garden, bake bagels, and homebrew fine beer.

Current Researchers

Laurie Hall is a Ph.D. student in the Beissinger Lab. She received her B.S. in Marine Science from Southampton College in New York and her M.S. in Marine Science from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California. Laurie’s previous research has focused on using genetic markers to make inferences about current and historic population structure and dispersal; this information can then be used in guiding the conservation and management of threatened and endangered species. On the Black Rail Project she will be comparing dispersal of Black and Virginia Rails at different spatial scales using occupancy data, and genetic and stable isotope markers. She will also be investigating the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation in the San Francisco Bay area on genetic differentiation and effective population size of Black Rails.

Nathan Schmidt is a Ph.D student in the Beissinger lab. He got his B.S. in Zoology and Biological Aspects of Conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has with spent time analyzing with landscape use of Whooping Cranes in Wisconsin. He is focused on understanding how the changing, dynamic nature of wetland shape and distribution affects the black rail population. He is investigating long-term changes in wetland distribution and area with historical aerial photography dating back to the 1950s and measuring current wetland size changes in the field to understand short-term changes.

Philippe Girard was a post-doctoral researcher in the Beissinger lab from 2008-09. His research interests have focused on population genetics and conservation biology. He examined the evolutionary dynamics of Black Rails at different temporal and spatial scales. His work consisted of: (1) developing genetic markers; (2) elucidating the origins and  connectivity of the Californian Black Rail populations; and (3) evaluating the effects of habitat fragmentation on the current processes occurring within and among populations of Black Rails.

Orien Richmond received his Ph.D. in the Beissinger lab. His research interests include wildlife-habitat relationships, remote sensing and avian conservation. On the Black Rail Project he has investigated competition between Black and Virginia rails, rail-habitat relationships and grazing impacts on Black Rail occupancy dynamics. He also developed a wetland mapping procedure using high-resolution satellite imagery to locate additional Black Rail habitat in the Sierra foothills. Orien is now a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Benjamin Risk completed his MS at the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2009. His research focused on understanding the role of connectivity and area in metapopulation dynamics. In collaboration with other members of the Black Rail research group, he developed methods to incorporate missing data and false absences into measures of connectivity. He worked at SFREC in the summers of 2007 and 2008, where he conducted Black and Virginia Rail surveys, assisted with trapping, and conducted a pilot telemetry study. Ben is now a Ph.D. student in statistics at Cornell University.