Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival May 8-11Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival
2008 Festival Speakers/Guide BiosAndrea Swingley lives in Fairbanks and is the former education coordinator of the Alaska Bird Observatory. She's been an avid birdwatcher in Alaska for more than 15 years. Ben Lizdas is currently the sales manager for Eagle Optics and an avid birdwatcher as well. His interest in birds and optics dates back to his college years when he was conducting bird surveys on the prairies and oak savannahs of Wisconsin. Betty Siegel moved to Homer 5 years ago after retiring from a career in social work in San Diego. She's been an avid birder for 20 years and volunteers for Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge at Islands & Ocean Visitor Center and is active in the Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges. Bob Gill is a project leader for shorebird research with the USGS Alaska Science Center who has worked on shorebirds since 1976. His work has been mostly at coastal sites in the Bering and Chukchi seas and along the Alaska Peninsula, but also throughout montane regions of the state and at several warmer sits elsewhere in the Pacific Basin. His primary interest is in migration. Brad Andres launched his professional career studying migrant shorebirds on the North Slope of Alaska and Black Oystercatchers in Prince William Sound. He served for 10 years as regional shorebird and landbird biologist in the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Migratory Bird Program in Anchorage, and is now National Coordinator of the US Shorebird Conservation Plan in Washington D.C. His involvement in shorebird and wetland conservation has stretched from the High Canadian Arctic to southern Chile to western India. Buzz Scher has been passionately watching birds for well over 40 years, having now birded on all the continents except Africa. He's a professional civil engineer in Anchorage, as well as the Audubon regional editor for all of the Alaska Christmas Bird Counts. Caitlin Robinson became a passionate birder while working as a research assistant in the rainforest of Australia. Monitoring piping plovers on Long Island, NY for the Nature Conservancy sparked her interest in shorebirds. She is currently a Master's Degree candidate at San Jose State University where her research has centered on western snowy plover use of salt ponds. Caitlin works as a biologist at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. Carla Stanley is a gardener, artist, science and art teacher, mother, and lover of wildlife and wild places. She has lived on the Kenai Peninsula for 38 years and has watched land development occur at the expense of the wild creatures that were here first. Carla believes that we must all do better for the wildlife that has existed in our neighborhoods long before neighborhoods even existed. Carmen Field is a coastal science educator and naturalist with the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, providing educational programs for Alaska students and visitors to the Alaska Islands & Ocean Visitor Center. Daisy Lee Bitter has lived in Alaska for 54 years, having taught science in Anchorage for 39 years, produced an award-winning TV series, administered educational programs for Alaska Native students, and served as a school principal. By 1986 Daisy Lee had become a regular on public radio's Kachemak Currents. She set up an award-winning program for Homer's Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, helped organize the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, and she volunteers for many non-profit organizations. Dale Chorman is a lifelong birder who lives in Homer and has worked as a naturalist in Alaska for over 25 years. Dan Thorington is the Alaska Islands and Ocean custodian, and a lifelong birder. Dave Erikson is a professional biologist with over 36 years of experience in birding in Homer. He complies data for the annual Christmas Bird Count in Homer, and has volunteered with the Shorebird Festival since its beginning at the viewing stations, leading bird walks, and giving presentations. Elizabeth Jozwiak is a wildlife biologist for the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Soldotna, Alaska. While her primary focus is carnivores, she takes every opportunity to go birding, and is the local coordinator for the Kenai Loonwatch program. Liz has been leading walks at the Kachemak Shorebird Festival since 2001. Elizabeth Wasserman is an Education Specialist for Lake Clark National Park & Preserve. She's an intermediate birder who enjoys discovering birds wherever she is in the world. George Matz is an avid birder who was active with Anchorage Audubon for about a dozen years and now lives in the Homer Area. He likes to participate in citizen science birding projects. Jeff Bouton has, for the past 24 years, worked as a field researcher, professional tour leader (including 5 years in Alaska), and most recently travels the country giving presentations and leading trips as the Birder/Naturalist Representative for Leica Sport Optics, USA. He is a contributing author on the ABA Bird Finding Guides to both Alaska and Florida, respectively, as well as the recent book "Good Birder's Don't Wear White", he writes the regular column "Adventures with Austin" for WildBird magazine, and has a sponsored blog on the Birdwatcher's Digest website - www.birdwatchersdigest.com/leica. Jo Ann MacKenzie is Executive Secretary of the Taiwan International Birding Association (Canada), and a past president of the British Columbia Field Ornithologists. Her interest in birds began about 30 years ago after watching the behavior of one particular small bird for several days in May. The bird that sparked the avian passion was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Jo Ann lives in Surrey, British Columbia, and co-leads birding tours in Taiwan. John Wenger is a wildlife biologist/naturalist with an M.S. in Nature Interpretation, and has held positions with ADF&G, USFWS, and the Alaska Division of Parks. He has taught natural history classes for the University of Alaska Anchorage, and created and operated a highly successful business conducting natural history expeditions and classes into Alaska's wilds. After a 35-year career, he is retired but active with his nature preserve in Bolivia. As his business card says: "Now retired - just sniffs flowers and gawks at birds all day". Ken Tarbox moved to Alaska in 1976 and has worked as a fish biologist for 35 years. He graduated from the University of Washington with a B.Sc in Fisheries Science and from Louisiana State University with a Master of Science in Fisheries. He was the ADF&G Research Project Leader for Upper Cook Inlet Commercial Fisheries Division from 1980 to 2000 when he retired. Ken has been an avid birder and, along with numerous other volunteers, helped to put together a wildlife viewing trail on the Kenai Peninsula. Laurie Daniel is a wildlife restoration biologist with the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and a longtime active member of the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society. Laurie serves on the Board of Directors for KBCS and is the Overlook Park chairperson. She has led the day-long hikes into Overlook Park for most all the years they've been part of the Shorebird Festival. Not surprisingly, she lives on the Bluff overlooking the Park. Margaret
Williams is the managing director of
World Wildlife Fund's Kamchatka-Bering Sea ecoregion
program, which entails leading a team of experts in
climate change, wildlife biology, fisheries, oil and
shipping, and communications to implement an
international conservation strategy for the Bering
Sea and Arctic. Mossy Kilcher has lived in Homer her entire life, and is an artist, photographer and an avid, lifelong birder. Mossy is a member of several bird organizations and participates in many local bird activities, including feeder watch, bird counts, and bird walks. She also contributes material to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Mossy's main passion is filming and photographing birds, especially songbirds, documenting their habits, and collecting their songs. Nancy Lord is a Homer writer and creative writing teacher. Her books include Fishcamp, Green Alaska and Beluga Days. Orville Lind is an Aleutiq, born and raised in a small village along the Alaska Peninsula pacific coast called CHIGNIK; Aleutiq word for BIG WINDS. He is currently a Refuge Ranger for the Alaska Peninsula/Beacharof NWR at King Salmon in Bristol Bay. His hobbies include teaching Alaskan art, traditional stories, music, hiking, hunting and fishing, and he is an avid outdoorsman. Rich Kleinleder is a wildlife biologist who has lived in Homer for 20 years. He is the author of the Homer Birding Hotspots Guide and website - www.birdinghomeralaska.org Steffen Oppel is a graduate student in the Department of Biology and Wildlife at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Steffen came to Alaska in 2005, spending three summers on the North Slope, chasing King Eiders on breeding grounds to explore aspects of their breeding ecology, and to catch them for satellite tracking. Originally from Germany, he became interested in bird watching while working in the German Wadden Sea, on of the largest shorebird staging areas in the world. He has worked in many places around the world, and received a M.Sc. in Landscape Ecology in 2003 for bird conservation work in Ecuador. Susan Sharbaugh holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington. She worked as a research technician, then pursued a graduate degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, studying the physiological adaptations of Black-capped Chickadees to survive the winter in Interior Alaska. Susan taught as an adjunct at UAF and is now the Senior Scientist for the Alaska Bird Observatory. She has done field work in Alaska, Washington state, Panama, South Africa, and the Northwest Territories. This work mainly focused on physiological adaptations of animals in response to environmental extremes. Toby Burke is employed by the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. He has been a wildlife technician and active birder for approximately 20 years, with 10 years of birding specific to Alaska. He is especially intrigued by the status and distribution of Alaska and Kenai Peninsula birds and enjoys birding with his wife and family.
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