Monthly Meeting: Sara Leon Guerrero
So, you redetected a rare bee species…now what?
Sara is a Program Manager with the Community Science team at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, where she supports the climate-adaptive work of the Parks Conservancy, NPS, and One Tam partners. She spends her time developing and implementing community science programs, such as Marin Wildlife Watch and the Tamalpais Bee Lab, designed to fill critical data gaps, spark curiosity, and to engage a diverse cross-section of Bay Area residents in stewarding and protecting natural resources. Prior to joining the Parks Conservancy, Sara was a lab and project manager at UC Berkeley in Dr. Gordon Frankie’s lab, where she studied bee-plant relationships in California and Costa Rica and worked with Bay Area farmers to create native bee habitat.
In 2024, the Tamalpais Bee Lab program redetected Trachusa gummifera in Marin County after it had not been seen for over 40 years… Yay!!! … But then what? … Despite being a species of greatest conservation need, little is known about its distribution, habitat use, and other life history characteristics, and without this information, it is challenging — if not impossible– to target conservation actions that can help increase the stability of remnant population(s). So how do we protect a species we know so little about? During this talk, we’ll share One Tam’s approach for going “from find to protect” for this special species.