Date: Friday, October 16, 2026
Time: 5:30 PM -9:00 PM
Location: Sixth Ward Athletic Club (Banquest Room), 22 West Broadway, Oneonta, NY
Doors open at 7:00 PM.
Also available on Zoom. Pre-registration is required for the zoom program at https://tinyurl.com/conservation-biogeography
As part of our 58th Charter Dinner Celebration, Dr. Lauren Sultaire will present about Bird conservation in general, the tools biogeographers use to map and model bird distributions, and the process of creating species distribution models to aid in endangered species habitat detection. Her focal species will be the Nicaraguan Grackle, but she will discuss some local projects as well. She will overview the difficulties of working with rare species that resemble other more common ones, discrepancies between IUCN classifications and our observations, and the challenges of conserving habitat specialists. Dr. Sultaire will walk the audience through the steps in the modeling process, including how their eBird data contributes to the creation of maps that help us predict habitat suitability.
About the Presenter
Dr. Lauren Sultaire is a Biogeographer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at SUNY Oneonta (since 2023).
A Michigan native, Lauren attended MSU as an undergraduate in the Department of Zoology. In 2010 she earned a minor in Conservation Biology at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and developed an interest in the human dimensions of wildlife conservation. Intrigued by the more applied approach to understanding human-wildlife interactions, she made the transition to the Fisheries and Wildlife Department for the completion of her Master’s Degree. Intrigued by the amazing tools and perspectives Geography offers to study wildlife distributions, Lauren completed her doctorate in the Department of Geography at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2023. There, she studied the biogeography of nonmigratory and neotropical migratory birds. She has worked with mammals, reptiles, and birds, but the country, people, and ecosystems of Nicaragua unite her diverse taxonomic interests.
