Oct 1, 2026 · 1 hr 28 min · 11 segments
Justin, now Mosquito Project Coordinator with DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife and formerly KFBRP’s field supervisor (2015–2023), traces his path from a teenage birdwatcher in Berkeley to…
You know, how did you get here? What is your interest in this work? And why are you doing it here?
Gosh, like I just, as a kid, liked nature, liked being outside, really discovered in a sense I was exposed to kind of birds and bird watching when I was about 13.
For me, just even the... really was into dinosaurs and kind of discovering that birds are real live dinosaurs.
I kind of changed my life trajectory from being a paleontologist studying bones to a ornithologist studying real life, you know, breathing dinosaurs.
And so I just chased, you know, I don't know, I just kind of didn't, in some ways didn't really have a plan in life, or I did, I just wanted to do field ornithology and so kind of chased different bird jobs all around the world sort of as my as my career sort of from from college on and kind of by the time I was 35 eventually like landed here in Kauai after you know just working all around the world with different kinds of birds and different kinds of places And then came here for a, I really liked nest searching.
Like it's really understanding, you need to understand who the bird is, what's important to it.
So it's a really fun way to, I don't know, just interact with an animal like that and see how much you can figure out about it.
So I love the job that I was starting here in 2015, which was finding the nests of Akikiki and Akeke, two of the critically endangered honeycreepers, so that they could begin having a captive breeding population.
So that someday down the line, if these populations were to go extinct in the wild, there would hopefully be a captive flock that could survive.
So now there's like a hundred interesting stories in that little thing you just said.
So first of all, what happened when you were 13? Like you said, that was when you kind of shifted from dead dinosaurs to living dinosaurs.
My mom had started this, um, program, this Beach Watch program, where I think the Gulf of the Farallones, National Marine Sanctuary, and some other people had organized volunteers.
This was like the early 90s, and they had volunteers all up and down the beaches of Central California, kind of doing monthly surveys of like all the birds and the wildlife at the beaches, identifying the cool dead things that were washed up on shore, things like that.
You know, how did you get here? What is your interest in this work? And why are you doing it here?
Gosh, like I just, as a kid, liked nature, liked being outside, really discovered in a sense I was exposed to kind of birds and bird watching when I was about 13.
For me, just even the... really was into dinosaurs and kind of discovering that birds are real live dinosaurs.
I kind of changed my life trajectory from being a paleontologist studying bones to a ornithologist studying real life, you know, breathing dinosaurs.
And so I just chased, you know, I don't know, I just kind of didn't, in some ways didn't really have a plan in life, or I did, I just wanted to do field ornithology and so kind of chased different bird jobs all around the world sort of as my as my career sort of from from college on and kind of by the time I was 35 eventually like landed here in Kauai after you know just working all around the world with different kinds of birds and different kinds of places And then came here for a, I really liked nest searching.
Like it's really understanding, you need to understand who the bird is, what's important to it.
So it's a really fun way to, I don't know, just interact with an animal like that and see how much you can figure out about it.
So I love the job that I was starting here in 2015, which was finding the nests of Akikiki and Akeke, two of the critically endangered honeycreepers, so that they could begin having a captive breeding population.
So that someday down the line, if these populations were to go extinct in the wild, there would hopefully be a captive flock that could survive.
So now there's like a hundred interesting stories in that little thing you just said.
So first of all, what happened when you were 13? Like you said, that was when you kind of shifted from dead dinosaurs to living dinosaurs.
My mom had started this, um, program, this Beach Watch program, where I think the Gulf of the Farallones, National Marine Sanctuary, and some other people had organized volunteers.
This was like the early 90s, and they had volunteers all up and down the beaches of Central California, kind of doing monthly surveys of like all the birds and the wildlife at the beaches, identifying the cool dead things that were washed up on shore, things like that.
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