Karinne Tennenbaum SY ’26 has always loved birds.
“I find birds so magical because they are everywhere in this completely mundane way, right outside our windows, but they hold so many mysteries,” Tennenbaum says.
Her longtime fascination with the behavior and diversity of birds—more than 10,000 species—took on a layer of urgency when, while researching for a high school paper, she learned about the staggering threats facing the global bird population. In the last half-century, North American bird populations have decreased by nearly one-third, the equivalent of 3 billion birds lost from our skies due to habitat and food source threats.
“I realized that this was an area where I could make a difference,” Tennenbaum says. She began volunteering at a local wildlife rehabilitation clinic and dove into local breeding bird surveys and research on the effects of environmental toxins on wild bird populations.
Spreading Her Wings
When Tennenbaum began thinking about college, Yale immediately appealed to her as a place where she could explore her calling to solve the challenges facing bird populations.
“It was clear to me when I visited that Yale was a place where you can go all in on what you love and be multifaceted in the pursuit of your passions,” Tennenbaum says. “At Yale, I get to study under the best ecologists and evolutionary biologists and retrofit facilities to improve the safety of Yale’s architecture for bird populations while working in the ornithology collections at the Peabody Museum to preserve avian history. I get to do what I love.”
Working with the Peabody’s bird collections has been particularly meaningful.
“When birds that strike windows are brought into the Peabody, I prepare them for the research collections,” Tennenbaum says. “It’s so important because otherwise, these birds would just have died in vain. This preserves them and helps us get information from them so we can help the scientific community to learn about bird populations globally.”
A Bird’s Eye View
After graduation, Tennenbaum hopes to stay in academia, pursuing a PhD researching birds in the larger contexts of their ecosystems. While at Yale, she has contributed to research at the Yale-Myers Forest in northeastern Connecticut and, through the Comita Lab at the Yale School of the Environment, in Panama exploring secondary forests and predation pressure.
“It’s really allowed me to figure out where in ornithology I belong, and what areas I want to focus on in my own academic career,” Tennenbaum says.
But while academia is her long-term goal, she also wants to keep community engagement at the forefront.
“If we want to bring back a thriving bird population, it can’t just be through pure scientific research—we have to engage the public at the same time,” Tennenbaum says. “It’s why I’ve taken a lot of English classes at Yale because I know I need to be a good communicator, not just a good scientist.”
It’s also why Tennenbaum founded Taking Flight, an educational initiative to foster an environmental ethic and passion for birds among young people. Through Taking Flight, she has led Birding 101 workshops through Splash at Yale and collaborated with the Yale Bird-friendly Building Initiative.
Tenenbaum has also led trips with Yale Outdoors and the Yale Birding Student Association, of which she is co-president.
“It’s all about helping people feel a vested interest in protecting birds,” Tennenbaum says. “Because birds are so common and ever-present, people might think they’ll just always be around, but that’s not going to be the case unless we do something. Thanks to Yale, I now have the skills I need to tackle this problem from every angle, saving the birds before it’s too late.”