Each year SCVAS staff members have the tough job of picking a select few volunteers to honor for their inspiring work to support our chapter. We owe our success to these and many more incredible volunteers, and we are honored to work with all of them. Thank you!
These are the 2020 Award Nominees
Carter Gasiorowski
Carter is one of SCVAS’s new volunteers who has taken the shelter-in-place as an opportunity to get creative with volunteering. You may have seen his virtual field trips featured in our monthly Avocet Updates or on our YouTube channel, and if you haven’t yet, we encourage you to take 10 minutes to explore Ed Levin or Grant Ranch with him!
Richard Blaine
Richard has been hard at work during shelter-in-place in scanning decades worth of historical newsletters to create a true archive of Santa Clara Valley Audubon’s newsletters, stretching back to 1929! This is still an ongoing project, but we’re excited to see a true historical archive of birding in Santa Clara County taking shape on our website. You can see Richard’s work, and read up on the history of SCVAS and birding in Santa Clara County in our Avocet Archive.
Linda Ruthruff
Linda joined the EAC 10 years ago and ever since then her sensitivity, sensibility, and love for birds and pollinators has been a bright guiding light as SCVAS engages in advocacy and conservation throughout Santa Clara County and beyond. We are happy to have this opportunity to thank Linda for her work on the EAC, her wisdom, and her friendship.
Unice Chang
Unice is a new addition to our Field Trip and Outreach committees, and she has helped us work to make our field trips more accessible for people looking to get outside and appreciate nature with limited energy or mobility, teaching us how to assess trails for accessibility, and helping us design resources to make SCVAS a hub for birding that supports every part of our county’s community. You can find our resources on accessible birding here.
Julie Amato
Julie Amato has been a leader in helping us apply for grants with SCVAS’s Development committee. Her organizational abilities, as demonstrated during our preparation for the OSA grant, are unmatched. She has a deep understanding of the grant-writing process and is thorough and tenacious. She’s also a total pleasure to work with!
Chuq von Rospach
Chuq has an impressive history as a volunteer with SCVAS, involved in the Birdathon and Outreach committees, as well as lending his talents as a photographer for our publications. We would like to thank Chuq for his stewardship of the South Bay Birds list, and all the support he has provided our organization! You can view his photo gallery here.
Ann Hepenstal
Ann Hepenstal has taken over our Outreach committee and in a short period of time has become a leader in our effort to reach out to a more diverse community, and making birding more accessible for every person in Santa Clara County. She’s full of energy and enthusiasm for outreach, and we’re always looking forward to seeing where her next idea takes us! During shelter-in-place she has also produced a fantastic video on gardening with native plants that you can view on YouTube.
Carlos Marquez Garcia
Carlos is one of SCVAS’s new volunteers who has been responsible for translating our self-guided field trips into Spanish, allowing us to share birding with a wider community and helping us engage more people with the passion of birding. We’re incredibly grateful for his effort in helping SCVAS reach out to more of Santa Clara County!
Eve Meier
This year has seen our beloved field trips turned on their head in order to continue. Eve, our intrepid field trip coordinator led SCVAS and our fantastic field trip leaders in a pivot that gave resulted in the self-guided and virtual field trips that have allowed us to explore new birding locations with the support of expert birders without coming within a Turkey Vulture’s wingspan of another person.
Luis Villablanca
Luis has been another fantastic volunteer helping open SCVAS up to a wider audience by translating our self-guided field trips into Spanish, allowing us to share birding with a wider community and helping us engage more people with the passion of birding. Even beyond his work as a translator, Luis is one of the talented photographers who has been generous enough to share some of his work on our website. You can see more of his great photography here.
Dani Christensen & Laura Coatney
Dani and Laura have taken on SCVAS’s Instagram @scvasaudubon page, bringing it to life with recent sightings, photography by our community’s members, and the local hotspots, all accessible on your phone, all on top of being fantastic field trip leaders who have contributed to our ever-growing library of self-guided field trips.
Self-guided Field Trip Authors
These field trip leaders have taken on the challenge of shelter-in-place and have shared their favorite birding spots with us, whether widely known or hidden away, doing the research and writing to lead us through field trips without ever sharing the trail in person. We would like to thank Julie Amato, Mike Ambrose, Dan Bloch, Adam Burnett, Dani Christensen, Laura Coatney, Michael Hawk, Ann Hepenstal, Rick Herder, Kirsten Holmquist, John Hurley, Chris Johnson, Barry Langdon-Lassagne, Ginger Langdon-Lassagne, Diane McCoy, Hugh McDevitt, Brooke Miller, Lisa Myers, Kitty O'Neil, Bill Pelletier, Mary Ann Roberston, Edward Rooks, Ann Verdi, Luis Villablanca, Chuq Von Rospach and more to come as we add to this library.
Wetlands Discovery Program Docents
The docents of WDP have spent shelter-in-place completely revamped our 30-year old wetland education and field trip program, working to research to update curriculum and produce videos to allow SCVAS to share our education programs on virtual platforms. During this they have utilized their skills as field trip leaders, photographers, educators, and researchers to tackle new challenges during this time. A big thank you to Elaine Gould, Linda Johnson, Jim Meikrantz, Mary Ann Robertson, Ginger Langdon-Lassagne, Garrett Lau, Jim Liskovec, Dwight Agan, and Liz Salzer!
Banner Photo Credit: Willets by Steve Zamek