92ND ANNUAL MEETING & BANQUET

MAY 21st AT KNOX FARM MANSION

Celebrating 92 years of nature preservation, the annual meeting and banquet of the Nature Sanctuary Society of Western New York, Inc., will be held on Thursday, May 21, at the Mansion at Knox Farm State Park, at 437 Buffalo Road, East Aurora, NY 14052.

The banquet will get underway with a reception at 5:00 PM followed by a buffet dinner at 6:15 PM. NSSWNY elections will be held and awards presented, followed by a presentation by our own RachelEchevarria (see page 2 for details). We’ll also be holding a silent auction and plant sale to benefit the Land Acquisition Fund of the Society; to donate items to the auction, contact Auction Chair Necole Zayatz before May 5: necolette@gmail.com.

To donate native plants to the plant sale, please email Josh Konovitz at jjkonovitz@gmail.com

The banquet fee will be $45 per person. Please complete and submit the registration form on

the back cover, along with your payment, before May 5. We can’t wait to see you on May 21!

Rachel Echevarria to Speak at Annual Meeting On The Bat-Owl Predator/Prey Relationship 

Rachel Echevarria will be our speaker at the NSSWNY banquet on May 21. Her presentation, “Bats and Owls Together in the Night Sky,” will feature her research on whether a predator-prey relationship exists between nocturnal birds of prey and bats. 

“In this work,” Rachel says, “it is important to gather reliable and comprehensive data as there are few studies and also contrasting results

cur-rently available on this topic. Using playback of owl calls, frog calls, and noise, we sought to

examine our hypothesis that bats would exhibit predator avoidance be-havior in response to predator (owl) calls,” she says. 

As an environmental scientist and bat biologist with a back-ground in geology, Rachel is engaged on a Masters thesis track at SUNY Fredonia for bat behavioral research (2025-2027). She began her education for conservation and envi-ronmental management in 2015 at LoGuidice Educational Center and then continued over the next few years complet-ing internships around environmental sustainability. She con-tinued into higher education at SUNY Fredonia in 2020, working alongside mentors in the environmental science, geology, and biology departments. 

Rachel began interning for NSSWNY in the winter of 2022-23 and was elected to its board in 2025. She has also volun-teered with the annual salamander migration census and data collection field trips at the Society’s Alexander Preserve. 

At SUNY Fredonia, Rachel has been a teaching assistant for labs in the biology, chemistry, and environmental/geology science departments; a student ambassador for the biology department, lending advice and guidance for incoming fresh-men (2022-2023); and a participant in the regional soil judg-ing competition—in which her team won as New York’s best team. Her other local internships have included one at the Royal Fern Nursery that focused on learning about na-tive species and management for invasives. 

During the past five years, Rachel has been active in the SUNY Fredonia campus greenhouse and is also conducting two independent research projects in the biology and geolo-gy department that will be completed in 2027. She has also worked fulltime as a direct support professional for The Re-source Center, caring for developmentally disabled individu-als. In addition, she has volunteered with the local humane society in Dunkirk, caring for rescued dogs in her free time. 

A Delicious Banquet Menu Awaits You 

The caterer Martha Beardsley Augat of Martha 360 LLC offers an innovative menu. The reception hour starting at 5:00 PM will feature a charcuterie table and a beverage station offering lavender lemon water, mango-tangerine iced tea, lemonade, beer, and wine. At 6:15 PM, banquet guests will be treated to the following dinner options, served buffet style: 

Green salad 

Dinner rolls & butter 

Asparagus with roasted red peppers 

Roasted pork loin with apples and sage 

Chicken Picccata 

Risotto with peas 

Glazed carrots with Knox Farm honey 

Plated Vegan option: vegetables in Red Coco-nut curry with jasmine rice 

Dessert: deconstructed strawberry shortcake 

Coffee & tea station