Palm Springs: Sustainable & Wild

Season 2

Join co-speakers Noelle Ronan and Kristen Lalumiere of US Fish and Wildlife Service (Palm Springs, CA) for a presentation that explores the fascinating world of bats where we will cover the basics of bat biology and ecology, such as anatomy and feeding guilds, dispel common myths, explore the diversity of bats in southern California, review survey techniques, take a closer look at bat acoustics and bat detectors, and provide a summary of conservation best practices.

Noelle Ronan is a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Palm Springs Fish and Wildlife Office where she works on threatened, endangered, and at-risk species. Noelle has worked on bats since 1995 with agency and non-agency organizations. She has conducted bat population monitoring in California, eastern Washington, Colorado, the Midwest, northeast and mid-Atlantic states. Noelle has conducted acoustic monitoring surveys using bat detectors for Oswit Land Trust at Prescott Preserve.

Kristen Lalumiere is a wildlife biologist with the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, in the Palm Springs Fish and Wildlife Office. She works on projects involving threatened, endangered, and at-risk species through implementing sections of the Endangered Species Act. Kristen has worked on bat projects since 2004 with federal and state agencies in California and Nevada. She conducted bat research and surveys while working at Joshua Tree National Park for 16 years which included surveying and monitoring abandoned mines, help to protect important bat habitat, conducted acoustic monitoring surveys, as well as helped establish a bat species baseline for the Park.

Photo: NPS/Kristen Lalumiere

Join OLT Volunteer Kurt Kosek for bird watching walks at Prescott Preserve on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month.

Birders of all ages and experience levels welcome. Walks are under 1.5 miles on dirt trails. The group meets at the old golf cart crosswalk on Farrell, just north of Mesquite. Plenty of parking on Farrell.

Connect with other Prescott Preserve’s birdies via Prescott Preserve Facebook Group.

Oswit Land Trust and Desert Wildlife Center are inviting you to a very special presentation on how we can protect our wildlife from poisons here in our community. Did you know that 70% of our wildlife tested in California have dangerous levels of pesticides in their systems? And that 67M wild birds die every year in the US from poisoning?

OLT and DWC are partnering to bring Kian and Joel Schulman of Poison Free Malibu to Palm Springs to help and guide us in our quest to be a poison-free community. Kian and Joel have worked at the city, county, and state levels to promote effective regulations and legislation to restrict pesticides that endanger families, pets, and wildlife.

They will describe what these efforts have been like in Malibu and give us tips on how we can do it here. They will talk about how we can use more effective and less expensive strategies to repel, exclude, and deter rodents without killing them. Their talk will explain how pesticides, including herbicides and insecticides, disrupt vital ecosystem functions by degrading habitats, disturbing food webs, and killing soil organisms.

Poison Free Malibu is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to educate communities, businesses, and government about the need to stop using dangerous poisons that are affecting wildlife, pets, and people. Kian and Joel began their activism in Malibu, with the city passing a Resolution opposing anticoagulant rodent poison use in July 2013. They subsequently have worked with 11 other southern California cities for similar Resolutions. The 2013 Malibu Resolution proclaimed Malibu’s commitment to not use anticoagulant rat poison on city property. This was expanded to include all pesticides and became official city policy in the form of the “Earth Friendly Management Policy” in June 2019. Kian and Joel helped Ojai pass a similar Policy in December of 2024.

If you are part of an HOA or neighborhood association, please forward this invitation to your Board to attend.

THANK YOU!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the inaugural season of Palm Springs: Sustainable & Wild. The program’s goal was to produce a series of lectures, events, guided hikes, films, and workshops to enhance our community’s understanding of our native environment.

Thank you to the City of Palm Springs for funding the season through their annual Event Sponsorship program.

We are happy to report that Oswit Land Trust produced 32 events between October and April, attended by 1,800 community members.

Special thanks to our partners:

Now we start planning for year two.

Look for new events and calendar updates to start in October 2024.

If you or your company has an interest in environmental education, please consider sponsoring the 2024/25 season. Contact David Paisley at DavidP@OswitLandTrust.org for more information.

Events

1800

Community members

Palm Springs: Sustainable & Wild

MARCH

THANK YOU!