Skip to main content
Audubon’s New Climate Report and What it Means for Birds in the Arid West
October 22, 2019 — Fires and drought put increasing stress on western forests and the birds who live there.
Karyn Stockdale
Western Water Initiative Senior Director
Karyn Stockdale is Senior Director of Audubon’s Western Water Initiative working to address precipitous declines in water across the arid West—with a focus on the Colorado River and saline lakes. Karyn leads innovative conservation efforts - from public policy to restoration - to help decision-makers adapt to diminishing water supplies with improved policies and increased investments in climate resilient strategies.
Karyn believes we must adopt new and better ways to interact with and restore the natural world around us, recognizing all that it provides communities, birds, and wildlife in the face of the intensifying reality and stresses of our warming climate. She believes that nature also has the power to heal us. Through social services work early in her career, Karyn learned the importance of inclusive and equitable access to wild places, and this continues to influence her view that we need strategies and solutions premised on equity for people—which is critical to positive outcomes for nature. As we are currently experiencing severe, climate change-related drought conditions and impacts to our water supplies, Karyn sees it is time to address the history of water development in the West, and how its systemic inequities denied some communities access to water as well as water for nature.
Karyn oversees a multi-departmental Audubon team to address Colorado River basin water shortages and apply these lessons to other river basins, to scale up restoration projects in the Colorado River Delta and at the Salton Sea, and to conserve saline lakes—including Great Salt Lake—essential to birds across the West. Her work spans across Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming and northwestern Mexico.
Karyn joined Audubon in 2007 as Vice President, Executive Director of Audubon New Mexico. Prior to Audubon, Karyn worked for the Trust for Public Land on the protection of open space, cultural and historic sites, and environmentally sensitive lands, with a focus on the Rio Grande.
Karyn works to live in line with her core values. Besides sticking her neck out for what she believes is right, Karyn is raising two teenagers, settling back in Colorado, and striving for more time outdoors— and sometimes she wishes she would have been a field biologist.
Articles by Karyn Stockdale
A Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan Is in Place—Now What?
April 16, 2019 — Audubon charts a course for conservation on the Colorado River.
Western Water Highlights and Wins in 2018
December 21, 2018 — In 2018, we worked to protect the arid West’s greatest natural resource: WATER - for birds and people.
On Hope, Birds, and Tacos
December 03, 2018 — Touring the last great wetland of the Colorado River Delta.
