Mission Santa Barbara is a Spanish mission in Santa Barbara, California, United States. Often referred to as the 'Queen of the Missions', it was founded by Padre Fermín Lasuén for the Franciscan order on December 4, 1786, the feast day of Saint Barbara, as the tenth mission of what would later become 21 missions in Alta California.
Oology, , is a branch of ornithology studying bird eggs, nests and breeding behaviour. The word is derived from the Greek oion, meaning egg. Oology can also refer to the hobby of collecting wild birds' eggs, sometimes called egg collecting, birdnesting or egging, which is now illegal in many jurisdictions.
The Chumash are a Native American people of the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now Kern, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south to Mt Pinos in the east. Their territory includes three of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel; the smaller island of Anacapa was likely inhabited seasonally due to the lack of a consistent water source.
Santa Barbara is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting Alaska, the city lies between the steeply rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Santa Barbara's climate is often described as Mediterranean, and the city has been dubbed "The American Riviera". According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the city's population was 88,665.
Arlington Springs Man was a Paleo-Indian whose remains were found in 1959 on Santa Rosa Island, one of the Channel Islands located off the coast of Southern California. He lived about 13,000 years BP, making him possibly the earliest dated person in North America, and an important scientific discovery because his presence on the island at this early date supports a coastal migration theory for the peopling of the Americas. In 2022, after a NAGPRA request, Arlington Springs Man was repatriated to the Santa Ynez Band of the Chumash Indians for reburial according to their native customs at an undisclosed location.
Rollo Howard Beck was an American ornithologist, bird collector for museums, and explorer. Beck's petrel and three taxa of reptiles are named after him, including a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise, Chelonoidis nigra becki from Volcán Wolf. A paper by Fellers examines all the known taxa named for Beck. Beck was recognized for his extraordinary ability as a field worker by Robert Cushman Murphy as being "in a class by himself," and by University of California at Berkeley professor of zoology Frank Pitelka as "the field worker" of his generation.
Santa Rosa Island is the second largest of the Channel Islands of California at 53,195 acres. Santa Rosa is located about 26 miles (42 km) off the coast of Santa Barbara, California in Santa Barbara County and is part of Channel Islands National Park.
Sespe Creek is a stream, some 61 miles (98 km) long, in Ventura County, southern California, in the Western United States. The creek starts at Potrero Seco in the eastern Sierra Madre Mountains, and is formed by more than thirty tributary streams of the Sierra Madre and Topatopa Mountains, before it empties into the Santa Clara River in Fillmore.
Joseph Grinnell was an American field biologist and zoologist. He made extensive studies of the fauna of California, and is credited with introducing a method of recording precise field observations known as the Grinnell System. He served as the first director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley from the museum's inception in 1908 until his death.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, also known affectionately by locals as "the Whale Museum", is one of the earliest museums in the state of California. Founded from the Laura Hecox collection in 1905, the museum's collections grew extensively throughout the years, acquiring many Native American and archaeological artifacts, as well as natural history specimens. Currently, the museum is housed in a Carnegie Library, named after the Carnegie philanthropic foundation that funded the construction of the library in 1915.
The San Rafael Wilderness is a wilderness area in the mountains of north central Santa Barbara County, California, United States. It is north of the city of Santa Barbara and east of Santa Maria within the Los Padres National Forest. Formed in 1968, it was the first wilderness area to be created from a previously designated Primitive Area after the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. It also includes the Sisquoc Condor Sanctuary, created in 1937, which is the oldest designated sanctuary for the large endangered birds.
The Cuyama Valley is a valley along the Cuyama River in central California, in northern Santa Barbara, southern San Luis Obispo, southwestern Kern, and northwestern Ventura counties. It is about two hours driving time from both Los Angeles and the Santa Barbara area.
Soquel Canyon State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA) is an offshore marine protected area in Monterey Bay. Monterey Bay is on California’s central coast with the city of Monterey at its south end and the city of Santa Cruz at its north end. The SMCA covers 23.41 square miles (60.6 km2). Within the SMCA, fishing and taking of any living marine resources is prohibited except the commercial and recreational take of pelagic finfish.
William Leon Dawson (1873–1928) was a noted American ornithologist, author and lecturer.
Clinton Gilbert Abbott was an American ornithologist, naturalist, and Director of the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1922 to 1946. Abbott supervised the construction of the museum's current building in Balboa Park, expanded research field trips and expeditions, and participated in important conservation efforts in southern California and the Baja California region. He was instrumental in the preservation of the southern California desert area that became Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
Chumash Indian Museum is a Native American Interpretive Center in northeast Thousand Oaks, California. It is the site of a former Chumash village, known as Sap'wi. It is located in Oakbrook Regional Park, a 432-acre park which is home to a replica of a Chumash village and thousand year-old Chumash pictographs. The pictographs by nearby Birthing Cave are not open to the public, but can be observed on docent-led tours. Chumash people inhabited the village 10,000 years ago.
The Matilija Wilderness is a 29,207-acre (11,820 ha) wilderness area in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, Southern California. It is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, being situated within the Ojai Ranger District of the Los Padres National Forest. It is located adjacent to the Dick Smith Wilderness to the northwest and the Sespe Wilderness to the northeast, although it is much smaller than either one. The Matilija Wilderness was established in 1992 in part to protect California condor habitat.
Jan Hamber is an American ornithologist and conservationist. While working at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in the 1970s, she became involved in the effort to save the California condor, and has been credited with playing a major role in the condor's survival in the wild. Hamber was the biologist who tracked the last known California condor in the wild, placing the phone call that led to its capture at the beginning of the successful captive breeding program that saved condors from becoming extinct.
Kitsepawit, more commonly known as Fernando Librado, was a Chumash elder, master tomol builder, craft specialist, and storyteller. He was born at Mission San Buenaventura in 1839 as the son of two Chumash parents from the island of Limuw.
Petra Pico was a Chumash basket weaver, elder, and regarded as a figurehead of the Ventureño Chumash Community. She was born at Mission San Buenaventura in 1834 to two Chumash neophytes. Her parents were also born and raised at the Mission and had ties to villages throughout modern-day Ventura County, near Santa Paula and the Santa Monica Mountains.
