Cal Poly’s biology professor Lars Tomanek spoke Sunday night about the global warming effects on birds and humans at the 14th annual Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival.
Morro Bay, a self-proclaimed “bird sanctuary,” hosts the bird festival because it is part of the Pacific Flyway. A flyway, according to birdnature.com, is a border area related to migration routes of birds. There are four major North American flyways used for breeding and winter travel.
“Global warming is a debate that is over, the topic has been talked about and people are over it,” Tomanek said.
Yet Tomanek, whose research interests are global climate change as well as biochemical temperature adaptation, said that people are more likely to accept a problem if they are given ways to change.
“If we feel empowered to make change, there are things we can do,” Tomanek said.
Tomanek addressed his audience enthusiastically; he frequently asked questions and presented facts about what is happening with global warming and what may happen in the future.
The speech was one of the two special events that took place over the weekend. The other event was led by Rosalie Winard, a photographer who presented a photographic tour of the wetland birds across the country, according to the Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival Web site. Tomanek’s talk took place at the Morro Bay High School with more than 200 people in attendance.
“The talk was really interesting, everyone enjoyed it. There was a lot of applause and he was a very enthusiastic speaker,” animal science senior Danielle Guest said. “He said that if we don’t change the way we do things now, in 10 years it will be very bad for the environment.”
Guest is a volunteer at Pacific Wildlife Care, a center in Morro Bay whose goal is to rehabilitate injured or orphaned wildlife and return them to the wilderness.
“Working at Pacific Wildlife Center, I saw firsthand how global warming was affecting birds,” Guest said. “Pelicans were having frostbite on their feet due to not migrating in time South because the weather was still warm, so they stayed and then winter came.”
Tomanek’s talk addressed the issues of how to solve, educate and motivate. Saying that “we need to reinvent the way we live” and that the “way we are trying to protect our economy is very detrimental to our future.”
Tomanek got interested in the environment when he was 11 years old when he was growing up in an industrial environment in Germany. From there, he knew he wanted to help and became a temperature physiologist, whose job it is to see how marine organisms are affected by global climate raise.
“The Black Catbird has been affected so much by the warmer climates that they have completely changed their migratory patterns; they used to go through Africa but are now seen in Ireland,” Tomanek said.
The talk included how global warming affects humans and Tomanek said that even students can help out by eating organically and turning off the lights.
The festival ran from Jan. 15-18 and offered up to 100 events, including workshops and guided bird tours. The festival is sponsored by the Morro Coast Audubon Society and takes place each year, rain or shine, on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.