Raptor Fest 2020

Gina Kent - avian research and conservation institute

 Gina Kent has worked for ARCI since 2000. She grew up in Wisconsin and received a B.S. in Wildlife and Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 1998. Upon graduation, she served as a field biologist on various studies of birds, reptiles and amphibians, small mammals and invasive plants from New Mexico to New York and Missouri to Australia. Once hired as a seasonal field biologist on ARCI's Short-tailed Hawk project, Gina became hooked on field studies of birds in Florida. While maintaining her employment with ARCI, she earned her M.S. degree in Biology from Georgia Southern University in 2004 with important research on the stop-over ecology, habitat associations, and parasites of Swallow-tailed Kites. Gina’s results contributed significantly to a substantial expansion by the Mexican government of the Sian Ka’an International Biosphere Reserve, which she documented as the most important stop-over site on the swallow-tail’s 8,000 kilometer southbound migration.Gina became Research Ecologist and Coordinator for ARCI in 2004, assuming field duties of finding and monitoring nests, climbing nest trees, trapping, radio tagging, and tracking birds as part of the organization’s studies of nesting ecology, habitat selection, demography, migration, and conservation biology for over a dozen species. Gina writes proposals and reports, manages telemetry datasets, conducts GIS and data analyses, and hires, trains, and supervises field technicians.

Friday, June 5th at - Swallow-tailed Kite roost sites, migration, and conservation opportunities - ARCI began tagging Swallow-tailed Kites in 1996 with the smallest satellite transmitters yet produced and soon discovered that the U. S. population’s migration pathway was much different and ended much farther away - over 8,000 kilometers - than had been imagined. By 2005, we had combined this dramatic new remote-sensing technology with direct VHF radio tracking in South America to confirm consistent annual movements over Gulf and Caribbean waters, Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, eastern Central America, and around South America’s Amazon Basin to wintering sites in the heterogeneous landscape of southern Brazil and nearby Bolivia. In 2011, to identify year-round habitat needs and range areas, determine critical breeding areas, estimate annual survival, and investigate migration and wintering threats, we began deploying the smallest ever GPS-equipped satellite transmitters. These devices provide up to eight locations each day, accurate to within 15 meters, for several years. This collaborative project with Dr. Jennifer Coulson was made possible by funding from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and by Microwave Telemetry’s unscheduled development of a satellite/GPS unit small enough to be carried by a Swallow-tailed Kite. Such data will enable us to refine management recommendations and intensify conservation efforts where most needed throughout the Swallow-tailed Kites year-round range.