IMPACT OF HABITAT DESTRUCTION AND FRAGMENTATION ON BIRDS

Robert Gentry will be the featured speaker at the Monday, January 13, 2020 meeting from 7-9pm at the Gateway West Community Room in Kalispell.  Mr Gentry attended Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas where he received a degree in biology. His senior thesis research was about a little blue heron and cattle egret colony on the shores of Lake Conway, a shallow lake with extensive wetlands and cypress, gum and cottonwood trees and snags. He looked at chick mortality in the colony and examined the cooperative sharing of mating/brood-rearing territory.

He attended the University of Missouri for graduate school where he studied the impacts of forest fragmentation on the mating success of ground-nesting neotropical migrants, particularly the Ovenbird. He looked at minimum area requirements, the impact of edge of forest interior mating success in a transect of forest fragments, and depredation by edge species and brood parasitism.

He has traveled to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Belize and Guatemala in winter to help assess impacts of habitat degradation on these birds in their winter range.

After graduate school, Robert attended Vermont Law School where he obtained a Master’s degree in environmental law and a JD degree. After law school he worked for 2 states on environmental cleanup and compensation under CERCLA and state law equivalents. In 2010 he established a private practice in which he focuses on public interest environmental law and immigration law. He continues to keep up with impacts of habitat degradation and fragmentation for area sensitive birds and other animals with a focus on the impacts of climate change.