San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday)
Biologist rescued peregrine falcons
The first project of Geoff Monk’s career as a wildlife biologist was also the most dangerous.
He was 24 years old and working for the Bureau of Land management in Ukiah (Mendocino County) when he volunteered to be lowered from a helicopter to snatch peregrine eggs from a large nest fiercely guarded by a female falcon.
The pesticide DDT, which had built up in the mother bird’s body, caused her to lay thin, damaged eggs, and she was at risk of crushing them.
Instead they were incubated and hatched in a lab at UC Santa Cruz. Monk performed this harrowing act again to return the chicks and remove the porcelain decoy eggs he’d left in their place.
The switch worked, and Monk was soon recognized as a top falcon spotter, flying up and down the state collecting eggs as the peregrine population slowly recovered and was removed from the endangered species list in 1999.
Monk, 67, had a long career as a wildlife biologist and environmental consultant in Walnut Creek. He died Oct. 14 at his Alamo home of glioblastoma, a fast-growing brain tumor. Monk fought for 18 months through two surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy, said his wife, Sarah Lynch, also a wildlife biologist.
When Monk started out in 1977, there were only four known falcon nesting sites in California. After his first year, spent either dangling from helicopters or climbing down from cliffs where aircraft could land, there were nine.
“Geoff would get in helicopters flown by Vietnam vets, and they would go to these crazy cliffs in Yosemite to find these eggs,” Lynch said. “They’d fly as close to the nest as they could without crashing and Geoff would rappel out to get the eggs. He and the pilots used to say they enjoyed the risks. It was a thrill for him to rescue those eggs.”
Monk worked for the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and at UC Santa Cruz as a full-time researcher in the Predatory Bird Research Group.
“Geoff ’s research was fundamental to documenting the fact that there was a peregrine falcon population in Northern California and that they were indeed still reproducing,” said wildlife biologist Pete Bloom. In 1979, Bloom and Monk were the first to be granted a permit to band nesting peregrine falcons in the state so they could be identified and tracked.
“He was a passionate natural historian and a pleasure to work with in the field,” Bloom said. “We went over some very tall cliffs, dropping 300 feet. The falcons were always surprised and animated to see us. That animation involved screaming bloody murder and striking any body part that happened to be available, at great speed.”
Monk’s talent was recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which hired him away from the Bureau of Land Management and then sent him to UC Berkeley for his master’s degree in wildland resource science. He arrived at Berkeley with work experience and stories that not even faculty members could match.
“Geoff was a key player in the history of peregrines in California,” said environmental scientist Bob Risebrough, who worked with him at the Bodega Marine Laboratory. “His work contributed significantly to the repopulation of the species.” James Geoffrey Monk was born Feb. 2, 1954, in San Francisco. He and twin brother Sydney grew up in Pleasant Hill and Lafayette. The family home backed up to Buckeye Ranch, which later became Briones Regional Park. Monk’s earliest wildlife studies came from trapping foxes and opossums in a box with a stick propping it open. He always released what he caught.
His interests turned to falconry and keeping birds of prey: a red-tailed hawk, a Cooper’s hawk, an American kestrel. He ended up letting these go, too.
At Acalanes High School in Lafayette, he discovered a second calling as a Plymouth troubleshooter in an auto shop. In timed competitions he could break down an engine, fix it and rebuild it in record time.
“He was the handiest person I ever met,” Lynch said. “He could fix anything. It was an extra bonus. I didn’t realize that when I met him.”
After graduating from high school in 1972 he entered Sonoma State University as a premed student, but soon transferred into wildlife management at Humboldt State. After his junior year, he took a summer job with the Canadian Wildlife Services in Alberta, where he learned how to breed peregrines in captivity. The peregrines there were dying off from eating smaller birds toxified by DDT they absorbed from the insects they ate.
That was causing the eggshell thinning that Monk set out to cure. The first study he undertook involved flying low in fixed-wing aircraft over peregrine habitats in California, Oregon and Washington state. He had special dispensation from the Department of the Interior to fly in close enough to spot peregrine nests. He’d then return by helicopter.
None of this sat well with the resident peregrines. The species is known as the fastest bird alive and can reach speeds of up to 200 mph.
“She’d dive-bomb his head as he was spinning around on the rope,” Lynch said. “Peregrines kill their prey with their feet. If he hadn’t worn a helmet, he would have been seeing stars.”
After four years there were 100 nests in Northern California. Monk continued until 1989, when his success restoring the peregrine population induced a career change. He left his position at UC Santa Cruz to become a wildlife consultant in Novato.
A year later, he met Lynch when she was hired as a staff biologist working with Monk after graduating from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. They started doing field jobs together, looking for spotted owls at night.
In 1992, Monk formed Monk & Associates in Walnut Creek, helping businesses obtain open-space preserves to compensate for the impact of development. A few years later he had enough business to hire staff. Lynch was the first employee.
They were married in 2002, in a ceremony held on a friend’s cabin cruiser motoring out under the span of the Golden Gate Bridge. After living in Walnut Creek, where their son, Ethan, and daughter, Megan, were born, they moved to an old horse property in Alamo.
Every year, his falcon egg rescue partner Monte Kirven joined the family for Thanksgiving, bringing along his pet peregrine to perch on his wrist and watch the dinner preparation. They were looking forward to Thanksgiving in October 2017 when Kirven went silent. He was living on a hilltop in Santa Rosa when the Tubbs Fire burned through. Monk called the sheriff to check on Kirven, who was found dead at age 81 in his bed. His falcon was dead, too.
Monk’s last big cause was saving the California tiger salamander, which was listed as a threatened species in 2004. Housing developers in Sonoma County hired Monk & Associates to find the amphibians, who live underground and only come out in the rain.
“Geoff never stopped doing all of the fieldwork even though he was the head of the company,” Lynch said. “He once found 98 tiger salamanders in one day.”
Monk’s memorial will be held at 11 a.m. Nov. 13 at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in the hills of Lafayette, down the road from where he had grown up and fallen in love with soaring birds of prey.
Monk is survived by his wife, Lynch, and their children, Ethan and Megan, all of Alamo; his mother, Diana Monk of Santa Rosa; his sisters, Kelly Monk of Ashland, Ore., and Anne Monk of Santa Rosa; and brother, Eric Monk, also of Santa Rosa.