Mendocino’s MarvelousDragonflies

by Kathy Biggs and Sandra Hunt-von Arb

Learn about the beautiful, colorful, and useful dragonflies in our area, their unique biology, and their role in our environment. Kathy and Sandra will introduce the most common of the 61 species that breed here.

Kathy has been a nature lover all her life, and a birder since she bought her first home, but it wasn’t until she built her first wildlife pond that the dragonflies totally captured her attention and inspired her to create the first websites for California’s dragonflies (https://bigsnest.powweb.com/southwestdragonflies/caphotos/), and then the first guide book, Dragonflies (Anisoptera) of California (co-authored with Sandra von Arb). She also has websites and books on the dragonflies of the greater southwest, and is now involved in a guide for Coastal Northwestern Mexico. Through her dragonfly studies, she has contributed to projects preserving their habitats.

Sandra Hunt-von Arb has been a professional wildlife biologist focusing on sensitive and endangered species in northern California, southern Oregon, and northern Illinois for 30 years. She is a co-founder of Biodiversity Education and Research Foundation (BEAR Fdn), whose mission is to foster ecological stewardship through science and education. She discovered her passion for dragonflies while surveying for the endangered Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly in northern Illinois over 10 years ago. She brought that passion back to California, and Kathy Biggs took her under her wing as a mentor, which eventually led to co-authoring the guidebook Dragonflies (Anisoptera) of California.

Join us in person Noyo Marine Field Station in Noyo Harbor or Via Zoom