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Announcement: my Masters thesis was accepted! Can we say, ‘excited!?!?’ As other thesis-based-degree achievers can attest and all others can imagine, it’s a long and hard road. After 11 full months of fieldwork, constant writing, various employment breaks, and then more writing, my 122-pg thesis (BELOW) was finally accepted by The Australian National University. Yes, I guess you can now call me a Master of Conservation Biology- not nearly as professional-sounding as Doctor (PhD), but perhaps one day…

For the keenly interested, a free download can be found here at www.ChristinaZdenek.com (scientific publications from my thesis are in the works)

After my Masters, I started my own habitat restoration company in LA., removing lawns and planting native plants. Quick background: unlike most non-native plants, native plants* provide habitat (edible food, appropriate shelter, and suitable nesting habitat) for local wildlife.

*native plants: plant species that co-evolved in a particular region with all the other local wildlife. In contrast to non-native plants: introduced species that are indigenous to another region; often are inedible for the majority of local insects and can also become noxious weeds that take over habitat and/or farmland.

(TOP LEFT) A sod-cutter machine aids me in removing a home-owner's thirsty, hungry, and expensive lawn in LA to replace with mulch (TOP RIGHT; dusty stuff, hence the protective gear) and later (when client can afford the next phase of the project) native plants.

One client's home-lawn removal project she contracted me for (BELOW) resulted in a $1,000-drop of her water bill (from $1,200 to $200), not to mention the savings on not having a gardener come to mow the lawn every two weeks or the financial and environmental cost* of fertilizer every 6 months.

Although I successfully completed 5 contracts (4 residential and 1 commercial), I discontinued this effort because I felt it was too slow and inefficient at achieving my intended goal of restoring habitat. I have learned that a better use of time is joining existing volunteer projects (e.g. that pull weeds and plant natives), or going into consulting work where big (ie. >5acres) projects are funded, managed, and revisited for 5-yr periods to ensure success.

*environmental cost: fertilizers from residential and commercial properties cause run-off pollution to rivers and the ocean. This results in over-nutrification of rivers and the sea, which in high enough quantities can lead to dead zones (e.g. Gulf of Mexico) and eutrophication, whereby an abundance of algae ensues (algae-blooms) due to increased levels of nutrients like nitrates and phosphates. Whence this algae dies, bacteria eat it and, because bacteria are eukaryotes that have respirating metabolisms like us, they consume all the dissolved oxygen in the water, leaving insufficient levels to sustain fish populations- hence the fish-kills in over-nutrified waterways.

About the Book:
"I have spent 14 full months out bush in tropical north Queensland in Australia, studying the iconic Palm Cockatoo. I found them truly awesome and, being the only person in the world to be studying them at the time, I felt compelled to share my impressions with others, especially kids. Specifically, I knew that my nieces and nephews had never heard of them before, nor many other species from the special region of Cape York Peninsula where Palm Cockatoos live.

So, I wrote this factional story about the remarkable wildlife of the region, then collaborated with a creative and committed photographer to create this unique children’s book. I think you’ll find it exceptionally educational and visually very appealing. Enjoy!"
~Christina N. Zdenek

(View inside pages and/or buy the book here)

One of my jobs during (and later after) my Masters was free-climbing trees (ABOVE) for four months to wrap them with Christmas lights for, basically, the rich and famous of LA.

BELOW: To complete this particular job at a mega-house in Brentwood (LA, CA) took eight of us five days, working 11hrs/day. My task: wrapping 127 strands of lights around about a million little branches in this one 20’ (7m) tree. It took me 20 man-hours of free-climbing this tree to finish. Now THAT was a workout!

As field manager ('Crew Chief'), I ran crews of 2-10 men (yes, I was the only woman) and worked ~13-15hrs a day, 6 days a week. Graveyard shifts were sometimes required for commercial work (e.g. City of Beverly Hills, shopping centers, Queen Mary, etc.).

Although my personal life and wildlife passion had to sit on the side-lines for these four months, this job freed up eight months to play with wildlife last year, and the same again this year!

ABOVE: The Queen Mary is a large, retired ship that was originally built for tourism in the 30s and later stripped down and refitted into a troopship to transport war personnel during WWII. After retiring service in 1967, it lies anchored in Long Beach, California as a tourist attraction.

My job on the Queen Mary: straddle secured wood ( ABOVE RIGHT) across the hollow top, scoot along with dangling feet, and remove 147 strands of vertically-hanging lights (ABOVE LEFT). From the top of these three red-and-black smoke stacks, I took down the Christmas lights that the company I worked for had put up for Christmas a few months prior (ABOVE MIDDLE). I was of course was strapped in to a life-line on my full-body harness. Not to worry!

ABOVE: the Green Python (Morelia viridis) is an iconic snake that lives on Cape York Peninsula (far north Queensland, AUS) and New Guinea to the north. They are obligate ambush predators that eat a variety of small reptiles and mammals, invertebrates and birds. In Australia, the young are yellow; adults are green. In New Guinea, the young are brick red; adults are green.

They used to be frequently harvested from the wild for the pet trade, but since increasingly successful breeding efforts have more or less flooded the black market and dropped the price for these beautiful snakes, there appears to be less of a smuggling issue (at least in Australia). However, this is unconfirmed.

Like the Green Python, Eclectus Parrots (ABOVE) are also native to both Cape York and New Guinea. They are popular in the parrot pet trade, particularly for their beautiful coloration and good talking ability (supposedly second-best only to the African Grey Parrot (e.g. Alex: Irene Pepperberg’s well-trained, intelligent parrot)). Unlike most bird species, Eccys show sexually-reversed dichromatism, meaning that the female is the showy one and the male is the camouflaged one. Rob Heinsohn spent 10 years researching these parrots and, among many other things, found out why that is: the males travel far and wide each day in search of tucker (food) to eat and bring back to feed females, while the female guards the valuable nest hollow for 9 months of the year. She uses her bright-red body an obvious beacon against the white-coloured bark that screams, ‘this hollow is taken, mate!’

(ABOVE) I call this photo of mine TornadoBird. It’s actually a Yellow-spotted Honeyeater, and it is drying off after a sweet, afternoon bird-bath on Cape York. This was one of those lucky-photographer moments- the kind that always come around at a low frequency but the more you’re out there taking photos, the more of these moments you have.

This Northern Brown Bandicoot (Isoodon macrourus) (ABOVE) takes a brief watch-alert break from eating a turtle egg it had dug up from 6” below the ground 10minutes prior. Check out the ticks on this one's ears. Bandicoots are a nocturnal marsupial that eats large insects, earthworms, berries, and grass seeds. I have seen a feral cat hunting one down one time. Poor buggers.

(ABOVE) Brown Falcon: a common raptor (bird of prey) in the Cape York landscape. This one is getting ready to take flight.

The Scrub Python (Morelia kinghorni; previously M. amethistina): As Australia’s largest snake, they can reach total lengths of 5m (15’), with unconfirmed reports of 8m. Like all pythons, it is non-venomous, but the bacteria from a bite from one of these beauties could lead to a serious infection.

If you were wondering, yes, I am lying on the ground as the snake is coming toward me! Good times.

The Australian Figbird (ABOVE: female) is a common Cape York inhabitant that seems to always be making a group raucous in the fig trees throughout the day. This one is chucking back a fruit- fancy catching that exact moment, aye?

I have once seen a raptor swoop into a fig tree and snatch a male with its talons and fly away with it. Wild.

To expand my horizons in wildlife conservation, I am joining the Dickman lab (University of Sydney) for 3 weeks of out-bush capture and survey work in the Simpson Desert to track the populations of small mammals and reptiles.

I have also been asked to join a Koala leaf project as a field tech employee to sharp-shoot an 8-foot sling-shot (BELOW) for 6 months.

Christina’s News is my way of keeping friends, family, and colleagues updated with (mostly) the conservation-related activities of my life. It began in 2009, where for three years the focus was on my Masters study species, the Palm Cockatoo. Christina’s News then took a one-yr hiatus in 2012, but is back with popular demand! Anyone can receive them (I just need their email address), and now, for your viewing and sharing convenience, these e-newsletters will be archived in a blog format on my website (www.ChristinaZdenek.com).

Comments and suggestions are always welcome! Anyone can unsubscribe at any time; simply send a short request here. Thanks for viewing! I hope you enjoyed it and learned a thing or two about conservation!