Katia Goldberg

Katia Rose Goldberg, one of Conservation Nation’s 2026 Conservationist Grant recipients, is a biologist and ornithologist who believes conservation must be rooted in reciprocity and justice. She lives in João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil, and works in the Caatinga region.

Born in Washington, D.C., to a Guatemalan mother and an American father, Katia grew up speaking Spanish and English. She knew from an early age that she wanted to help protect the planet and studied conservation biology at the University of California, Davis, from 2018 to 2022.

Since graduating, she has worked in California, Guatemala, the Galápagos, and Brazil. Each place has taught her that conservation is not just science, but a relationship built through listening, communicating, and leading with love. Though she was not born in Brazil, she feels rooted in the Caatinga and is committed to protecting its birds, its people, and its fragile beauty.

Project Overview

Brazil’s largest seasonally dry tropical forest, the Caatinga, is a fragile region where deforestation and rising temperatures threaten native birds. More than 40% of Caatinga bird species nest in cavities, relying on mature trees with natural hollows. As these trees disappear, birds lose nesting sites and face increasing heat stress.

Through her Conservation Nation project, Katia will establish a nest box network to study how habitat conditions and temperature affect cavity-nesting birds. Her team will deploy 100 boxes: 96 across four habitat types representing different levels of land degradation, and four at the São João do Cariri Field Site for community education.

The team will monitor nest occupancy, clutch size, hatching and fledging success, and nestling growth, while recording temperatures inside and outside the boxes. The findings will help explain how birds respond to land-use change in the Caatinga and inform conservation strategies for agricultural landscapes, while engaging local communities in nest box stewardship.