Lourdes Rugge

Lourdes Rugge was born and raised in Mexico City and has lived for the past 12 years in Auburn, a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California. She has 15 years experience as a wildlife biologist. Lourdes developed her career working on Rasa Island as part of the team that generated the conservation and management plan for the seabird populations of the Islands in the Sea of Cortéz. Her main research work included demography and breeding success of the Heemann’s gulls and elegant terns in Baja California. Lourdes has extensive experience conducting offshore and pelagic surveys and was instrumental in the development of the inventory and management plan for the seabird roosting and breeding sites of Bahia de los Angeles. She also has been involved in the research of avian-wind energy interactions at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area. She served as the project coordinator and biological consultant to the National Renewable Energy Bird-Wind Energy Program. Her research included the development of a research and management program of environmental impacts of wind energy developments on bird populations. Currently, Lourdes works for ECORP Consulting, Inc., an environmental consulting company in Northern California and was recently nominated as the International Chairperson for the American Fisheries Society (AFS) California-Nevada Chapter.