The American Ornithological Society (AOS) has announced its 2025 award winners for achievements in ornithological research, service, conservation, and publication. Among this year’s recipients is Dr. Eric M. Wood, Professor of Biological Sciences at California State University, Los Angeles, who has been awarded the Harry R. Painton Award.
The award, presented in odd-numbered years, honors the lead author of an outstanding paper published in the previous two years in Ornithological Applications. Dr. Wood received the award for his paper, “Historical racial redlining and contemporary patterns of income inequality negatively affect birds, their habitat, and people in Los Angeles, California.”
The study explores the lasting impacts of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) security risk maps from the 1930s, which graded areas for mortgage investment and contributed to long-term racial and economic segregation. Using ground-collected, remotely sensed, and census data, the study found strong associations between historical redlining, present-day income inequality, and the distribution of bird habitat and biodiversity across Greater Los Angeles. Redlined zones—often the most urbanized and lowest-income—were found to support more synanthropic birds and fewer natural habitat features, while greenlined zones supported more diverse bird communities and green amenities like tree canopy cover.
Dr. Wood is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Cal State LA and co-director of the Urban Ecology Center at Cal State LA. His research focuses on avian and urban ecology, conservation biology, and landscape-scale responses of bird communities to climate and land-use change. His work has been published in Science, Nature Communications, and Ecological Applications, with more than 2,700 citations. Dr. Wood is also a research associate with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and serves on the editorial board of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The 2025 awardees will be honored at the AOS annual meeting this August in St. Louis, Missouri.