Program Meeting - All Things Bright & Full of Birds after Fire

October Program: Birds in Post-Fire Forests

Speaker: Maya Khosla

Maya's talk will focus on the incredible biodiversity of birds and other wildlife after wildfire—including the return of raptors, songbirds, and woodpeckers, to forests that are in the process of vigorous regeneration after wildfire. She will share photography, footage, hidden trail camera footage, and experiences doing protocol surveys in intact forests throughout California that have recently experienced wildfire.

Maya Khosla is an independent biologist and writer who began exploring the biodiversity of post-fire forests in 2014. Maya has led field trips “birding in the burn,” across recently burned forests in Mono Basin for ten years. Her work on giant sequoias after fire, conducted in collaboration with many other independent scientists, has been featured in Ecology and Evolution and in FIRE.  Her books include “All the Fires of Wind and Light” (poems from Sixteen Rivers Press), “Keel Bone” ( poems from Bear Star Press), and “Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek” (nonfiction from Golden Gate Parks). Her recent awards include the 2020 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the Fund for Wild Nature Grassroots Activist Award for her research and writing about intact forests of the American West. She also volunteers for Sequoia ForestKeeper. Her work has been featured in documentary films including “Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire” and “Village of Dust, City of Water,” which included her poetry.

Photo of a female Black-backed Woodpecker by Maya Khosla