Like many of us, Heaven Perez Sanchez’s path to birds and conservation has been less than direct. The first in her family to receive a college degree, Heaven is expected to graduate this May from Arizona State University’s 4+1 Program, an accelerated and challenging track that allows undergraduate students to complete their master’s program in five years. She entered the program as a mechanical engineering student, but after finding that her coursework did not provide her with a sense of purpose, she quickly pivoted to veterinary sciences. She was content with her decision – that is until her ornithology class. Immersed in research-driven and project-based assignments, Heaven found her purpose in conservation and ended up graduating with her Bachelor’s in Applied Biological Sciences with a Wildlife Management Certificate in May of last year. While she graduates with her master’s degree this May, she is excited to continue her research beyond the program and into the 2025 field season.

We first met Heaven last year when we kicked off the AWRR Grassland Motus Project, a collaboration between the AWRR, Arizona Game and Fish Department, Sonoran Joint Venture, and Arizona State University aimed at exploring the use of Motus technology in southwestern grassland habitats, better understanding the seasonal movement’s of priority grassland sparrows, and informing habitat stewardship efforts on the AWRR. Motus (Latin for “movement”), is a network of radio stations equipped to pick up signals sent from tiny, radio-emitting tags that can be affixed to insects, bats, and of course birds. In her first season with us, Heaven helped us take advantage of our on-site Motus station by working alongside us to capture and tag fifteen sparrows across three priority species – Botteri’s Sparrow (Peucaea botterii), Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum), and Cassin’s Sparrow (Peucaea cassinii). Additionally, she led the effort to deploy an analyze data from new technology known as Motus “nodes”, a tool that we hope will help us better understand local movements of these sparrows within and between patches of the AWRR.

Most range maps show these three sparrows as being year-round residents on the AWRR, but it seems that the birds, which almost entirely disappear during the non-breeding season, aren’t reading field guides. Additionally, while AWRR staff has worked diligently over the last twenty years to establish a control area that is mostly free of invasive Lehmann’s Lovegrass, it is unclear how or if these birds are responding to the treatment. Through her work, Heaven hopes to shed light on the full lifecycle of these priority birds and to provide the AWRR with information that will inform our habitat management efforts. We’re happy to be able to support her work this field season, and we’re excited to be able to keep her beyond her graduation date!