River Gates joined Audubon in 2017 and currently coordinates the Pacific Shorebird Conservation Initiative, which engages conservationists and communities around the most pressing conservation issues that threaten shorebirds throughout their annual cycles. She has more than 20 years of experience leading international shorebird conservation and research projects in the Pacific and East Asian-Australasian flyways.

David Krause has extensive experience living and working throughout Alaska. Much of his professional experience has focused on developing solutions that simultaneously achieve public health, community development, and conservation objectives. Prior to joining Audubon, he worked on federal land management and energy policy for The Wilderness Society. David has also worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on remote Yukon River tributaries and for the Wild Salmon Center in Oregon and Alaska. From 2017 - 2020, he served as an appointed member of the BLM Alaska Resource Advisory Council.

Shorebird Festivals and more, how Ecuadorian communities celebrate migration.

In Ecuador, Shorebird Festivals are becoming a local traditional fest whereas communities, civil society, and government combine their efforts to promote the value of shorebirds and their critical sites. Ana will describe how their efforts to celebrate shorebirds are providing positive impacts on their communities and ecosystems, and the benefits of partnerships between festivals.

Ana Agreda is an Ecuadorian wildlife biologist whose work has focused on shorebirds since 2007. She wrote the Shorebird Conservation Plan for Ecuador and runs a shorebird and aquatic bird fauna conservation project in three priority sites along the Ecuadorian coast. Education and connection with local people are an important component of all her projects, and for that reason Shorebird Festivals have been in the center of her work. She has coordinated three Shorebird Festivals in Ecuador, each one at the three key sites for shorebird conservation. Prior to her work with shorebirds, she spent significant time on the Galapagos, studying Swallow Tailed Gulls and Nazca Boobies for David Anderson of Wake Forest University. Since returning from the Galapagos, she continued studying birds on the continent and has devoted 25 years of her life to research and conservation of birds in Ecuador. Ana has published six books and 20 scientific articles, has organized explorations to the Amazonian sandstone Condor Cordillera and the Pastaza River Valley, and has also participated in the discovery of several new species for Ecuador. She has dreamt of coming to Cordova, Alaska to learn more about Erin Cooper’s work with the Forest Service and to participate in “one of the most important Shorebird Festivals in America”.

Celebrating shorebirds migration on Peru, South America

Fernando will go through the features of Peru as a country holding many migratory shorebird species, showing habitats they use in an equatorial and tropical country. He will also show what they do to conserve them and their habitats, and how they celebrate them through festivals.

Fernando Angulo Pratolongo is a bird conservationist. who has actively worked with birds and conservation projects since 1990. He has been Director of the White-winged Guan Conservation program from 2000 to 2016, during which time he successfully reintroduced the species in Lambayeque, Peru, where the guan has been recently downlisted to Endangered. He has served as Peru Officer for Threatened Birds and Important Bird Areas for BirdLife International in Peru between 2008 and 2011. He has actively participated in the creation and management of many protected areas in northwestern Peru.

Fernando is co-author of the Peru Shorebirds Atlas and actively works with this group of birds.  He also specializes in birds of the dry forest and northern Peru, and is principal investigator at the Center for Ornithology and Biodiversity (CORBIDI), member of four groups of specialists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and has numerous books, scholarly and popular publications about birds of Peru. He is co-author of the Peru Shorebirds Atlas and actively works with this group of birds. Currently he is the president of the Peru Ornithologists Union (UNOP). Recently he was awarded with “Carlos Ponce” prize as Conservation leader in Perú. 

In-Person. Free & Open to all. Donations accepted on-site.

Celebrate the Magic of Migration with this annual bird-centric art show, featuring local and Alaskan artists.  Gallery will be open throughout the weekend and continue on display through May 28. Enjoy “Sangria & Snacks” while viewing this art opening in tandem with the International Art Exhibit from Baja California, Mexico.

Follow the festival’s social channels to catch a virtual walk-through.

Virtual. Included in Festival Registration

Bird all day and meet on Zoom for the Awards. Not birding? You can still join and hear the tall tales and join in the fun.

Virtual. Included in Paid Festival Registration.

Tune in for a virtual presentation delivered jointly by Diego Luna Quevedo and Nathan Senner.

DIEGO LUNA QUEVEDO - Originally from Montevideo, Uruguay, Diego joined Manomet’s Shorebird Recovery Program in 2009 as a Conservation Specialist in the WHSRN Executive Office. From his office in Santiago, Chile, Diego works to bring together partners in developing alliances and processes for effective conservation. In particular, he leads in the design and implementation of strategies and action plans for WHSRN sites, primarily in Latin America, including building capacity for good governance.

NATHAN SENNER - Dr. Nathan Senner moved all over the country as a child, but claims Alaska as “home.” That time in Alaska led Nathan to take field jobs working with biologists in the most remote corners of the state as a teenager, and ultimately to fall in love with long-distance migratory shorebirds. Nathan went on to earn his B.A. from Carleton College in 2004 and then spend the next year as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow following the migration of Hudsonian Godwits from their breeding areas in Arctic Canada to their non-breeding sites at the southern tip of South America. Returning to the US, he began a PhD in 2007 with Dr. John Fitzpatrick at Cornell University and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, investigating how global climate change was differentially impacting two Hudsonian Godwit breeding populations. From 2012 to 2015, Nathan continued his work with long-distance migratory shorebirds as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands with shorebird guru, Dr. Theunis Piersma. While in The Netherlands, Nathan worked to understand how Black-tailed Godwit migrations and breeding biology were being affected by the combination of global climate change and agricultural intensification. Then, from 2015-2018, Nathan had a post-doctoral position at the University of Montana with Dr. Zachary Cheviron. He has been a professor at the University of South Carolina since January 2019 where his research group focuses on the migration ecology and population dynamics of Hudsonian Godwits, Whimbrels, and Red Knots.

Virtual. Free and Open to All.

Hosted by AUDUBON ALASKA

Brush up on your birding skills and go head-to-head with other #BirdNerds!  Tune in for a virtual birders’ social where you can put your skills to the test with this fun and challenging quiz. The focus will be on visual IDs and calls for Cordova birds.  

In-Person and Virtual. Included in Paid Festival Registration.

About the Presenter: Erin Cooper, a Wildlife Biologist for the Forest Service, has lived and worked in Cordova for 23 years. Her work has ranged from shorebirds and waterfowl to mountain goats and moose with a focus on ecosystems of the Copper River Delta. Since 2001 she has been a core member of the Copper River International Migratory Bird Initiative, promoting international conservation for migratory birds and their habitats throughout the Pacific Flyway.

About the Talk: Learn about the landscape and ecology of the Copper River Delta in this introductory presentation. Erin will present a brief overview of the Delta, the species that use it, and its connection to the Pacific Flyway.

In-Person and Virtual. Included in Paid Festival Registration. Like literary devices, there are elements and techniques you can add to your photographic toolbox to improve your shorebird and other wildlife imagery.

This is NOT about equipment. Milo Burcham will summarize some of the photographic elements and techniques that can make a shorebird or any wildlife image stand out among others.

Virtual. Included in Paid Festival Registration.

Tune in for a virtual presentation by Jonathan Vargas. A Mexican biologist, conservationist, birding guide, bird photographer, and shorebird expert; he did research stays in Utah and California and has participated in several shorebirds surveys in Northwest Mexico. Currently, he has been a leader in shorebird conservation in the Bahía Todos Santos, Baja California and a volunteer coordinator of the Urban Bird Program in the city of Ensenada,BC., Mexico.

"The Coastal Solutions project for the conservation of shorebirds in Bahía Todos Santos". It is a multidisciplinary and collaborative project between government agencies, private initiative, civil society organizations and the community. It focuses on reducing threats to shorebirds, increasing the reproductive success of the Snowy Plover, and promoting medium and long-term preservation through public policy management, research, monitoring, adaptive habitat management, festivals, conservation activities and citizen science.

Virtual. Included in Paid Festival Registration.

About the Presenter: Lisa Schibley joined the Shorebird Recovery Program at Manomet in 2008 and is currently the North American coordinator for the International Shorebird Survey, recruiting and engaging ISS volunteers and finding creative ways to tell shorebird stories using ISS data. Lisa holds an M.S. in Physics from the University of Arizona, and her background is in numerical analysis. As an enthusiastic birder living in Arizona, she coordinated the Tucson Christmas Bird Count and led field trips for the Tucson Audubon Society. She currently leads trips for the South Shore Bird Club.

About the talk: The International Shorebird Survey, founded in 1974 by Brian Harrington at Manomet, brings together two fundamentally powerful ideas. First, to know where conservation is needed and if initiatives have been effective, shorebird scientists need a broad understanding of species populations and trends. And secondly, a dedicated and enthusiastic group of shorebirders across the Western Hemisphere could supply shorebird scientists and conservation partners the data they need to make a difference. Lisa will talk about how ISS fits into Manomet's work with shorebirds, some of its interesting history, how Manomet has successfully expanded the project into South and Central America, what results scientists have gleaned from the data, and how shorebird enthusiasts can contribute data.