Stephanie Martin, Senior Ornithologist

Stephanie Martin

Stephanie Martin has worked for more than 10 years as a biologist from Maine to California. She received her Bachelor’s of Science degree in wildlife biology from the University of Montana, and completed her Master’s of Science degree in wildlife at Humboldt State University where she studied the behavioral relationships of spotted owls.

Her birding passion began while traveling throughout the Florida Everglades as a teenager and has blossomed ever since. Working as an ornithologist she has conducted point-count and nest search surveys in California, Nebraska, Maine, Montana, and Florida. Stephanie has traveled throughout Mexico and Central America as a recreational birder and diver, and as a mother of two she now finds herself pointing out birds and singing bird songs to her young daughters.

Professionally, Stephanie has bridged many projects with her diplomacy, working with the public, clients, and state and federal agencies to see projects through to their completion. She has worked on northern spotted owl issues throughout northern California, including the biological aspect of an EIS for the U.S. Forest Service. This required collaboration and coordination with stakeholders, as well as federal and state agencies involved in the project. She conducted behavioral surveys for mountain goats winter habitat usage in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho to help determine back country use patterns for winter recreationists. She used the observational data and the interests of the recreationists and the agencies involved to help find the middle ground for all interested parties.

While working in California she proposed, planned, managed, and conducted surveys for projects focused on neotropical migrants, spotted owls, great-gray owls, northern goshawks, forest carnivores, and small mammals. Stephanie has conducted numerous biological inventories and biological assessments for small county-wide landowners and large corporations. Such endeavors required managing multi-faceted projects, including resources assessments, wetland delineations, special-status plant surveys, and a deep understanding County, State, and Federal permitting processes.

Stephanie also developed and presented multiple training modules for employees and contractors working within specific transmission lines throughout California. The client’s employees were expected to have working knowledge of threatened, endangered, and special status species while working within the National Forest System. For the same client Stephanie was responsible for conducting focused wildlife surveys to analyze potential impacts on federal and state listed species for a proposed transmission line corridor between Napa and Sonoma Counties.

While in Nebraska, Stephanie collected data for a study on the effects of landscape patterns on bird species richness in agricultural systems. In south-central Nebraska farmlands and windbreaks she conducted and mapped multiple bird surveys and classified windbreak and farmland vegetation habitat.