FEATURE
Folks at the Morro Coast Audubon Society like to say that protecting birds means protecting the entire ecosystem.
Torrey Gage-Tomlinson, the organization’s program director, believes it wholeheartedly. The concept was a continuation of his early memories traveling across Latin America to go bird watching with his parents.
“It was a really unique childhood, and it gave me a broad perspective on the world,” Gage-Tomlinson said. “It was also really sobering because I would see parts of the world that have the most bird species out of anywhere just being razed. That gave me a sense of, ‘I want to do something about this.’”
For a while, he was the local nonprofit’s only staff member, essentially straight out of college and responsible for building the organization. The Morro Coast Audubon Society (MCAS) has three core tenets: conservation, education, and advocacy.
Gage-Tomlinson recently helped his nonprofit earn a $262,000 grant from the California Natural Resources Agency to sustain its most ambitious environmental education program, FEATHER, an acronym for Fostering Environmental Awareness Through High School Education Research. It teaches students leadership, environmental awareness, and the skills necessary to succeed in college and the workforce.
Right now it’s embedded in a college readiness curriculum, AVID, at Paso Robles, Nipomo, and Central Coast New Tech high schools, but the director hopes it’ll serve every high school on the Central Coast within the next five years. Throughout the current three-year grant period, an estimated 1,800 students will participate in FEATHER.
“That takes high school students from underserved communities, puts them out in nature doing community science, feet on the ground, getting hands dirty,” Gage-Tomlinson said. “All that fun stuff.”
Enjoying nature requires privilege—free time, mobility, money—so Gage-Tomlinson wanted his education program to make the outdoors accessible and intriguing to teenagers.
“I think high school is the age you’re really starting to care about things in the world, and you’re making decisions about your future,” the program director said.
FEATHER’s pilot program started during the 2024-25 school year with two junior classes. The goal was to make science as cool as possible and encourage high schoolers to take an interest in experiencing the outdoors. It also needed to teach leadership and assist with college applications.
Easier said than done, Gage-Tomlinson realized, because FEATHER must benefit every student, not just the ones who immediately gravitate toward science.
During the fall semester, students participate in a community science project coordinated by UCLA called Project Phoenix. It studies how wildfire smoke affects bird movement on the West Coast. FEATHER students learned the local birds near their schools and how to monitor them during their AVID class period on Fridays. Morro Coast Audubon Society supplied each high schooler with a pair of binoculars, and the students downloaded a free app to help identify birds.
FEATHER is also sponsoring a February field trip to bring students down to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County where they’ll meet the Project Phoenix researchers. Students are developing their own conservation research projects in tandem with Project Phoenix.
“This is leadership, public speaking, research,” Gage-Tomlinson said. “All those skills that are going to be really useful in college.”
For the rest of the school year, juniors are also responsible for designing a project that engages younger students from partner elementary schools and gets them out in nature.
“If you have a volunteer from MCAS coming into your elementary school classroom and showing you birds, that’s cool. Probably never see them again,” Gage-Tomlinson said frankly. “It’s completely another thing if your friend’s older brother is coming in and teaching you about birds. That’s a lot more impactful.”
Part of the idea, too, is to make kids aware of FEATHER at a young age, creating a loop that’ll encourage them to participate in high school.
This semester, students are contributing to Project Feeder Watch, conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Looking at feeders on their campuses, they decide what data to collect. Some track the weather and how much seed birds eat or what type of birds rely on the feeder when a predator comes in.
“These students get to work on a project run by Cornell or UCLA, and that legitimizes a lot of their work. It lends a lot of credibility to their work,” Gage-Tomlinson said.
Looking ahead, MCAS representatives and 30 student applicants will pack up and head out for a four-day trip to Fort Ord Natural Preserve, land stewarded by UC Santa Cruz. For many kids, it will be their first time camping. As part of the trip, they’ll assist the university researchers with mammal and reptile trapping, tour the college campus, and talk with professors.
Though FEATHER is Gage-Tomlinson’s brainchild, he couldn’t have created it alone. MCAS established a new staff position to oversee FEATHER, hiring Camryn Curren in the summer of 2025. As a Paso Robles High School graduate and a participant in a similar field studies program, the idea of returning to her alma mater and encouraging the next generation excited her.
Curren is present in the classrooms at each high school multiple times a week to lead the community science projects and support students. She’ll also attend the upcoming trips.
Engaging with students and seeing them progress has been her favorite part of the role. Curren knows not all the high schoolers will grow up to become scientists or researchers, but she knows these experiences reach beyond career choices.
“I hope the value is that each student learns they derive some sense of joy from being outside, from watching birds, from spending time with friends in the outdoors,” Curren said. “And I hope they learn that they belong in the outdoors, and that is the space that is safe for them … to find some sense of meaning and belonging.”
This article appears in Get Outside – Winter/Spring 2026.