Board
Graham Chisholm
Graham Chisholm has worked on land, water and bird conservation issues for over two decades. He has served in executive positions with The Nature Conservancy and Audubon. Chisholm co-founded Great Basin Bird Observatory and coordinated the Nevada Breeding Bird Atlas. He was a lead architect of the Tejon Ranch Conservation and Land-Use Agreement, an innovative settlement that protected over 240,000 acres just an hour north of Los Angeles in 2008. Graham served on the Executive Committee for Proposition 84 campaign, a $5.4 billion conservation and water bond measure approved by California’s voters. He has worked with agencies and tribes pioneering water right acquisitions for in-stream and wetland benefits, including establishing a land trust that has completed over 105 transactions and expended $50 million acquiring water rights to protect Nevada’s Pyramid Lake and the Truckee River. Graham lives in the San Francisco Bay area and has been a birder since childhood.
Chris Elphick
Chris Elphick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut. His work focuses on the conservation ecology of birds, especially in wetlands and agricultural settings. He has been studying coastal marsh birds and their habitats since 2002 and is a lead investigator for the Saltmarsh Habitat and Avian Research Program (SHARP), a collaborative initiative to study the ecology and conservation of tidal-marsh birds along the Atlantic seaboard. His research has been published in journals such as the Auk, Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, Journal of Applied Ecology, and Science. Book length projects include the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Nevada, and the Ecology and Conservation of Birds in Rice Fields: A Global Review.
Aaron Maizlish
Aaron Maizlish is an avid birder and photographer with a background in environmental enterprises. He has most recently worked in the field of third-party environmental certification, particularly focusing on sustainable forestry, fisheries and carbon services. He has photographed birds around the world and seen some of the world’s most endangered species. Aaron co-founded the Bird Conservation Fund because he saw an opportunity to address the significant decline of bird populations worldwide that is occurring in our lifetimes, and because of a desire to identify and support conservation success stories. Aaron resides with his family in San Francisco.
TOM MALONEY
Tom Maloney has been active in various bird related ventures throughout his career. Tom taught Coastal Birds, a course focussed on identification and migratory ecology, at Antioch New England Graduate School. On the Connecticut River, Tom spearheaded efforts for the Connecticut River Watershed Council to restore anadromous fish providing critical food chain support to the ecosystem. With The Nature Conservancy, Tom's focus on bird conservation informed landscape conservation plans in Massachusetts and California. As the Tejon Ranch Conservancy's first executive director, Tom helped to inventory birds and discover the birds of the Ranch. Tom has led natural history tours in the Arctic, Central America, North America and Europe. Tom's favorite bird is the Northern Hawk Owl.