Salton Sea Leadership Program: A Pathway to Conservation Work

 Audubon News Read More 

On a warm October morning, I joined biologist Kevin Manajerro and researcher Melanie Davis to load the truck with field gear before heading to a survey site overlooking the Salton Sea. The temperature had already reached 90 degrees, and it was only 7:00 a.m. After unloading our gear, we traversed the desert landscape with two distinct mountain ranges in view—the Orocopia Mountains to our right and the Santa Rosa Mountains to our left. Following six transects (set routes used to survey an area), we searched the ground for tracks and scat left by the Flat-tailed Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma mcallii), a small reptile with multiple adaptations for camouflage that help them minimize their shadow. Spotting the lizard brought a moment of excitement: it was the first documented at the site since Kevin began participating in the surveys. Between transects, I caught up with Kevin to learn how he found his way into this biological work.

Kevin is a 2026 Salton Sea Leadership Program (SSLP) alum, and Melanie was one of the program’s guest speakers. With the 2027 program just around the corner, I spent three days with three alumni, including Kevin, to learn about the fieldwork they have been doing since graduating.

Each year, over the course of four months, a cohort of 10 local residents participates in the Salton Sea Leadership Program to learn about environmental topics directly from researchers, engineers, and environmental organizations in the Coachella and Imperial Valleys working to protect the spaces plants, animals, and humans share.

During our conversation, Kevin shared that he is gaining college credit through the College of the Desert’s Work Experience Program with UCR’s Center for Conservation Biology.

When asked how he came to join the Center for Conservation Biology, Kevin said, “I met Dr. Lynn Sweet through my work at REI, but previously I met Melanie Davis through the Salton Sea Leadership Program”. The Salton Sea Leadership Program isn’t just a lecture series. It’s an educational internship taught by local researchers, engineers, and environmentalists, giving participants opportunities to meet the people doing on-the-ground work. Each year, Melanie presents her work with the endemic Salvia greata (Orocopia Sage) and encourages participants to pursue work in conservation even if their educational backgrounds aren’t in science. Since his graduation, Kevin has become a lab assistant in Dr. Sweet’s lab, assisting with “wildlife surveys in various locations around the Coachella Valley, like the Coachella Valley Wildlife Refuge”.

Kevin isn’t the only alum who has been busy conducting research in the field. Later, I reconnected with 2025 alum Amanda Bautista, who came to us with an extensive background in volunteering on Audubon bird surveys. After creating the first Salton Sea bird guide for her capstone project, Amanda went on to the Pacific Northwest Research Station, where she conducted woodpecker telemetry surveys to map their nesting season habitat and helped trap small mammals, including flying squirrels, as part of her work for the research station.

One aspect of the SSLP is continued alumni engagement in community outings and job search assistance. Through her continued engagement, Amanda was hired as a seasonal survey technician with the University of Idaho’s Yuma Ridgway’s Rail research project at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. There, she assisted with recording morphological measurements and collecting samples to analyze selenium buildup in the rails. When asked about her time on this project, she recalled, “In Arizona, the bird sounds were really quiet, I can hear [the Rails] splashing in the water. At the Salton Sea it’s so loud with all the birds and biodiversity”. Her experience reinforced a central lesson of the Leadership Program: the Salton Sea supports and sustains an abundance of life.

The Salton Sea is a designated Important Bird Area (IBA) and serves as a stopover for more than 300 species of birds along the Pacific Flyway.

Before parting ways so she could go look for a Blue Jay to add to her life list, I asked Amanda what the SSLP meant to her. With diverse cohorts, the program has meant different things to each student, but to Amanda, SSLP felt like “a family”. She continued, “It gave me a safe place to be a part of, and now it has become a big part of my life. I can count on my SSLP people to make me feel better being in the same field and being a woman in the field”.

Amanda now works as an environmental biologist with a consulting firm, surveying for reptiles, birds, and small mammals to ensure construction sites are in compliance with environmental requirements.

While on the road with a car full of SSLP alumni on the hunt for rare birds blown in by a recent storm, I spoke to another 2025 alum, Ciara Taylor. When I think of community in the Coachella Valley I think of Ciara. I first met Ciara at the Salton Sea Bird Festival in January 2025 after unknowingly, at the time, sitting behind her at an Oswit Land Trust lecture some months prior. During her time in SSLP she was a cohort rallier, helping move field trips along in the field and becoming someone we could all lean on for community. Since then, she has become a monumental figure in the local outdoor spaces. Alongside her “partner in nature,” Judy Gill, Ciara runs PS Take a Hike, a “hiking club” that is now “growing into a larger community, to get outside and get other people to hit the trails”.

When asked about her time as an SSLP student, Ciara stated the program was “a stepping stone to access the community and learn about things that are completely out of my wheelhouse.” Like many others in the program, Ciara doesn’t come from a traditional science background, which many people assume you must have to do conservation work. Combining her background in design and passion for the outdoors, she developed an interactive community-based capstone project where she “could apply design thinking and a design lens to consider how to create awareness, or how we might work together to solve a larger issue with different backgrounds”.

Now Ciara, Judy, and PS Take a Hike are preparing for the first annual Take a Hike Fest on November 14th at the Francis Stevens Park in Palm Springs. Take A Hike Fest is a “free community event celebrating hiking culture, healthy living, and conservation. By bringing together a bunch of nonprofits, including Audubon, and outdoor clubs and organizations that are out in Coachella Valley”. Alongside the fest, Ciara is curating a “full week of on-trail programming with different local clubs and organizations to encourage people to get outside”.

Kevin, Amanda, and Ciara aren’t the only SSLP alumni achieving great things in conservation.  Across the program’s first two years, 22 alumni have continued expanding their skills—from leading Spanish bird walks in the community and developing new Indigenous-led nature-based programming to becoming coastal stewards through the UC Cal Naturalist program and transferring to Universities to continue working towards biology degrees. Several SSLP alumni even recently traveled to the State Capitol to advocate for the birds and the protection of the places they call home.

The Salton Sea Leadership Program will return for a 2027 cohort. The application window will open in November to any local residents interested in building community with others, networking with science professionals, and learning about Audubon California’s work and the Salton Sea. 

Our SSLP application window is opening soon! Click here to learn more and stay in the loop.