LA KRETZ CENTER FOR CALIFORNIA CONSERVATION SCIENCE:

The Stunt Ranch Reserve is proud to join the UCLA Institute of the Environment (IoE), UCLA Life Sciences, the National Park Service, the State Parks and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, in the establishment of the IoE’s newest research center – The La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. The La Kretz Center has been created through a generous endowment from UCLA alumnus and philanthropist Morton La Kretz. It will provide a unique vehicle for integrating UCLA research with conservation and management efforts in the Santa Monica Mountains, LA River Basin and beyond. The Center will also support an exciting slate of educational activities, symposia, workshops and public lectures.

2010 SANTA MONICA BAY AUDUBON SOCIETY GRANT RECIPIENTS:

UCLA Students Jonathan Drury and Laurel Klein have been selected as recipients of the 2010 Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society Award. They will each receive $500. Jonathan, for his work on the causes and consequences of mate choice in house wrens (Troglodytes aedon). And Laurel, for her work on how anticoagulant rodenticides exposure on bobcats near an urban landscape have been observed to affect a range of non-target species globally including carnivores and predatory birds.

INTERPRETIVE TRAIL POSTS:

Posts, numbered 1-10, have been installed along the Stunt High Trail from the parking lot of the Reserve down to the meadow where the Stunt High Trail intersects the Yucca Trail. Plans are underway to install another 10 posts and to create an interpretive trail map that features vegetation and geological features at each post. This will be added to the Stunt Ranch website and will be of use to the Cold Creek Docents for their environmental education programs and to local hikers.

CENTER FOR EMBEDDED NETWORKED SENSING (CENS):

Phil Rundel, the Reserve faculty director, is a senior faculty researcher with the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), an NSF sponsored Science and Technology Center working to develop cutting edge technologies to facilitate the use of environmental sensor arrays.  Stunt Ranch serves as a site for a test bed of new technologies in sensor data transmission through satellite linkages as a collaborative project of the Reserve, CENS, NASA and the Information Sciences Institute at USC.

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