Raya Pruner

Raya Pruner grew up in a rural timber town, with a population little more than 3000, in SW Oregon. When she wasn’t in school, she spent most of her childhood outdoors, fishing with her dad, collecting mushrooms in the woods with her aunt or picking blackberries or raspberries for $1 a flat with her mom and 2 siblings. During her 10 years of picking berries she spent hours wandering around the rows discovering the occasional bird nest, catching damsel flies, lizards, or an early morning frost-frozen bee. These early picking days also amazed her with observations of fish and tadpoles stranded in the irrigated berry fields and observations of active bird nests that were torn down and burnt with the pruning process of the berry fields. These observations instilled an interest in protecting wildlife that continued into high school where she got involved with her local biology club and volunteered with the Oregon Fish and Wildlife conducting spawning surveys for endangered Coho Salmon and for the Wildlife Safari where she helped to educate the public about species like walking sticks, Burmese pythons, and artic foxes.

Raya graduated in 2002 from the University of Montana with degrees in Wildlife Biology and Archaeology. At that time she had become fascinated with the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions. However, she was hired the following year by the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah where she realized her passion for birds (particularly shorebirds) and traveling. This launched her career as a gypsy-biologist, where research opportunities took her from Eastern Oregon pit-tagging steelhead and Chinook Salmon smolts, to Louisiana conducting chorus counts on various frog species, volunteering in Denmark with Red Kites, working at the Klamath Basin Wildlife Refuge in Northern California with White-fronted Geese, to Panama City, Florida working for FWC studying Snowy Plovers, volunteering at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama mist-netting neotropical migrants and resident birds, and to Florence, Oregon working for the Oregon Heritage Foundation with Snowy Plovers nesting on the Pacific coast beaches.

Raya is currently working on a Masters degree in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida conducting research on the Cuban Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus tenuirostris) a state-threatened species in Florida that nests along the Gulf Coast. Raya’s research focuses on brood foraging behavior, habitat use, and the factors affecting chick survival. The goal of the study is to quantify the relationship between habitat quality and brood success to allow for evaluation of the effects of coastal engineering projects (beach renourishment, armoring, and/or inlet management) on Snowy Plover foraging and brood rearing habitat. Her research will provide valuable information for use in managing and conserving the remaining 220 pairs currently nesting on Florida’s beaches.