The Ridgeline
Meet our summer 2025 team!
While a small crew of staff keeps the organization running all year long, every year we welcome a new cohort of seasonal staff. It’s our pleasure to introduce our summer 2025 team!
Swallows around Kachemak Bay
While tree swallow populations are declining in Alaska, conservation strategies can help their nesting success. One of these projects is happening at Inspiration Ridge Preserve.
Kachemak Bay’s Top 10 Marine Worms
There’s no shortage of curious critters that call the intertidal zone home. Unfortunately, some of these critters are more universally loved and appreciated than others, and worms are some of the most under-appreciated.
Puffin Beaks
There are so many things about puffins that make them eye-catching and charismatic. But their distinctive, big orange-and-yellow bills are especially interesting!
Nature Journaling Naturalist
How nature journaling deepened a naturalist’s experience of the Wynn Nature Center.
Fall Berries
The neat natural history and uses of red fall fruits, such as rose hips, bog cranberry, lingonberry, red current, and high bush cranberry.
Meet the Cranes
Sandhill cranes gather just outside Homer, Alaska on a piece of land known today as Inspiration Ridge Preserve. The grassy meadow along the ridge provides ample food as well as the perfect runway for the young of the year to learn to fly as they gear up for their first great journey south.
Eager for Beavers
Fritz Creek watershed, where Inspiration Ridge Preserve is located, is one of the many areas where beavers have been removed from the landscape. A team of researchers from the University of Michigan conducted a study to find out what would happen if beavers were introduced on this landscape.
One piece at a time
Learn how Ed Bailey and Nina Faust conserved Inspiration Ridge Preserve in an effort to alleviate development pressure that would have cut wildlife off from critical habitat.
Freedom to move
Wildlife rely on habitat connectivity to be able to access food across seasons. Protecting wildlife corridors helps ensure wildlife continue to have the freedom to move.
Two on the Alaskan Coast
Nina Faust and Ed Bailey conducted wildlife surveys along the entire Alaska Peninsula coastline to help plan the future footprint of the Refuge. Their careers set the stage for their conservation efforts to protect Inspiration Ridge Preserve in retirement.
Winter Birds
Many of the birds the Preserve hosts in the summer are migratory, but there are some species that live here year-round.
Introducing Inspiration Ridge Preserve
Inspiration Ridge Preserve protects habitat for diverse wildlife, and is an example of the relationship locals have with a special species of bird.
Ten reasons to protect watersheds
Our top ten reasons we care about watershed protection, and why we work to protect watersheds in our region.
Where corridors converge
Homer, Alaska residents Edgar Bailey and Nina Faust spent their careers and lives supporting watersheds and wildlife habitat. This is the story of their work to conserve Inspiration Ridge Preserve.
