Our annual conference serves as the time to recognize outgoing Board members for their service and welcome new officers and Board members.

We elected Debbie Van Dooremolen as our new president. Debbie served on the Board for six years beginning in 2007 and rejoined the Board in 2023. Members will recognize her as a past chair of our science sessions at annual conferences. The Board is grateful to have someone with Debbie’s past Board, conference, and professional experience to lead our organization.

The Board thanked three outgoing members for their service: Robert E. Gill, Don Marsh, and Lynette Williams-Duman. Bob served for six years on the Board, having also served from 2000 to 2008. He was on the Publications Committee, is editor of the special publications series Studies of Western Birds, and is also an associate editor for our journal Western Birds. We look forward to Bob’s continued involvement with our Publications Committee. Don Marsh served for three years on the Board. Don, who was also on the board of Colorado Field Ornithologists, acted as a liaison between CFO and WFO. Lynette Williams-Duman served the last year of outgoing Board member Matt Baumann’s term. She is a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, and we benefited from her perspective in our discussion about student programs, membership, and many other issues. We hope many of you saw Lynette present her research at our conference in San Diego.

At the conference, WFO welcomed four new members: Diana Herron, Debbie House, Rodd Kelsey, and Hiram Rafael Moreno-Higareda.

Diana Herron

Diana has spent most of her life in Southern California and Arizona and currently lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she has resided since retiring in the early 1990s. A WFO member since 1977, she has attended many annual conferences, including the 2024 conference in San Diego. Readers of Western Birds may have seen her “In Memoriam: Virginia P. Johnson, 1930–2024,” a detailed homage to one of WFO’s founding members.

Prior to retiring, Diana worked in the exhibits and education departments at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Among her many activities at the museum over the decades, she led a monthly birdwalk for SDNHM members and organized major fundraising events. In her current role as the “Arizona Connection” to the museum’s Birds and Mammals Department, headed by Phil Unitt, she has supplied the department with hundreds of salvaged bird and mammal specimens.

As a member of Arizona Field Ornithologists, she serves on the AZFO board as treasurer and membership secretary. She has led birdwalks for the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and The Nature Conservancy’s Hart Prairie Preserve northwest of Flagstaff. From 1995 to 2000, she volunteered for the Arizona Breeding Bird Atlas project. Her participation in annual Christmas Bird Counts in various western states extends back to 1970.

In addition to her long-standing work for the birding community, Diana enjoys hiking and photography. She is an enthusiastic gardener; her specialties are cacti and roses.

Debbie House

Debbie is an ecologist with broad field experience in waterbird, songbird, and raptor studies, as well as aquatic invertebrate monitoring, bat acoustical monitoring, small mammal trapping, and herpetological surveys. A Southern California native, she has resided in Mono County, California, for the past 24 years while working for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, from which she recently retired.

At LADWP Debbie managed long-term bird monitoring programs at Mono Lake, Owens Lake, and the Lower Owens River. Her primary focus was saline lake waterbird population monitoring and ecology, serving as waterfowl director for the Mono Basin restoration program, and conducting breeding and migratory waterfowl surveys at Mono Lake, Crowley Reservoir, and Bridgeport Reservoir. She also established the waterbird survey program at Owens Lake, which supported the development of a site-specific habitat model.

Before joining LADWP, Debbie was a field biologist for the San Bernardino County Museum. The majority of her work was conducting baseline surveys for the establishment of the North Etiwanda Preserve. Throughout her career, she has published many field notes and papers as well as articles for peer-reviewed journals.

Debbie served on the California Bird Records Committee from 2019 to 2022, and has been an associate editor for Western Birds since 2022. She holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology with a minor in microbiology, as well as a master’s degree in biological sciences, both from Cal Poly Pomona.

Debbie’s schedule in retirement will include data-crunching and writing, working out, helping her loved ones, and wandering in the wild and quiet spaces of Mono County.

Rodd Kelsey

For more than a decade, Rodd has worked for The Nature Conservancy in California, where he currently directs the Land Program. In this role, he leads a team focused on expanding the network of public and private conservation lands across California and utilizing TNC California’s over 640,000 acres of protected lands as living laboratories to demonstrate climate-smart land restoration and management.  Before leading the Land Program, he was associate director of the Water Program, where he led statewide bird-friendly agriculture strategies and served as lead scientist. Prior to his TNC tenure, Rodd held multiple roles at Audubon California, including director of conservation and director of the Migratory Bird Conservation Program.

Among his research projects, Rodd is co-leading studies of shorebird migration and shorebird use of wetlands and flooded agricultural fields of the Pacific Flyway and operating a banding station at the Cosumnes River Preserve. He has led or participated in other field work, including studying the ecology of forest birds in the western US and habitat use of the Island Scrub-Jay, and monitoring riparian and coastal scrub bird communities in Southern California.

Rodd earned a BA in environmental conservation at the University of Colorado. He holds an MS in biology from Cal State, Long Beach, and completed a PhD in animal behavior and ecology at UC Davis. He lives in Sacramento.

Outside of work, Rodd travels as much as possible with his wife, Amy, and spends as much time as possible outdoors birdwatching, mountain biking, and hiking. Having also worked as a winemaker, Rodd enjoys helping with friends’ home winemaking adventures.

Hiram Rafael Moreno-Higareda

A conservationist from Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, Hiram is recognized for his dedication to coastal wetland ecosystems. Growing up near Estero de Punta Banda inspired his passion for biodiversity and conservation, leading him to advanced studies in biology and ecosystem management. Currently completing his PhD at CICESE (Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada), Hiram is engaged in research on the population genetics and environmental challenges affecting endangered species.

Hiram is a national expert on the Light-footed Ridgway’s Rail and the only published author in Mexico on the Belding’s Savannah Sparrow. He actively collaborates on conservation efforts for the California Least Tern and Snowy Plover and Northern Harrier in Baja California. For the Science Program at the 2024 WFO Conference in San Diego, Hiram reported on the trends and current status of the Light-footed Ridgway’s Rail in Mexico.

Hiram rediscovered the California Black Rail at Bahía de San Quintín and recorded a new population at Estero de Punta Banda after nearly a century, marking a significant regional conservation milestone. As a professor at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, he blends scientific research with community engagement. Hiram also leads the Lagunas Costeras project, which promotes binational habitat preservation. In his free time, he enjoys outdoor activities and cooking seafood and Midwest-inspired cuisine.