
Over the last year, we’ve collaborated with the Conservation team to hone truer to this mission. We meet regularly to learn about upcoming conservation initiatives and identify opportunities for collaborative messaging. We’ve identified joint projects in which we can work together to amplify some aspects of Conservation’s work. Below are highlights from the past season:
Homes & Habitats Workshops
In 2023, the Backyard Habitat Certification Program Team shared that many people who go through the program approach them with questions: “What can I plant to attract birds?” “How can I learn more about native plant identification?” “How do I create homes for other wildlife and insects in my garden?”
In response, this spring we piloted a new series of online and field classes focused on native plants. In the Botany for Birders series, we collaborated with Ryan Gilpin to offer digital classes and walks that explore plant ID with a birder’s eye. Janet Gifford also returned to teach people about building habitats for mason bees. These programs were a big hit, and next fall, we’re looking forward to collaborating with local native plant experts like Symbiop and Sauvie Island Natives to offer even more workshops that support the community in creating “Homes & Habitats” for native flora and fauna across our region.
Wilkes Creek Bird Song Walks
This spring, we leveraged our popular Bird Song Walks series to increase awareness of a key site for local conservation advocacy. Wilkes Creek Headwaters in outer east Portland has been the epicenter of a multiyear collaborative effort to bring community participation and public funding to restoration and access improvements in the area. Micah Meskel and Brodie Cass Talbott teamed up to lead weekly walks that celebrated this ecologically unique landscape and shared updates about the community organizing that is shaping this land into a refuge for local plants, animals, and people.
SCAPE School Partnerships
For nine years, Bird Alliance of Oregon’s Conservation team has been working with Clean Water Services (CWS) to lead community science studies at Fernhill Wetlands, Cook Park, and other CWS habitat enhancement sites. Led by Joe Liebezeit and Candace Larson, this initiative has engaged hundreds of local residents in tracking the impacts of improved habitat on the diversity and abundance of bird species. Over the years, Candace has also worked closely with Bird Alliance of Oregon’s Education team to use this data as a teaching tool with local school children.
This year, we formalized and expanded this ongoing collaboration: Science & Community Action to Protect the Environment (SCAPE) School Partnerships are designed to build long-term relationships between schools, natural spaces, and Bird Alliance of Oregon’s Education and Conservation teams. Education team members Abby VanLeuven, Kesia Tosh, and Sam Richins visited classrooms multiple times over the course of the fall and spring, introducing children to concepts ranging from bird identification to wetland habitats. We also helped the students read and understand real data collected by our community science team. The partnerships culminated with visits to a local green spaces to practice the skills they learned in the classroom. Over the last year, we worked with more than 600 children through these partnerships. This fall, we’ll be bringing SCAPE to 18 classrooms, including schools in Northeast Portland and every single fifth grader in the Forest Grove School District. We’ll also be working with Bird Alliance of Oregon biologist Cara Gates to draw from community science data on Snowy Plovers to support similar partnerships on the coast.
Education as Organizing for Conservation
These are just a few of the myriad ways our Education and Conservation teams are beginning to work more closely together. Significantly, we’re working to identify key conservation advocacy priorities that Education can amplify over the course of the coming year.
We’re excited to share that to accomplish this work, we’ve restructured our departments to invest in collaboration.
In Education, Brodie Cass Talbott, long-time rock star in first Youth and then Adult Education, will take on a newly created position as Adult Engagement Manager – Statewide. In this role, he’ll draw from his strong background as a naturalist and educator and his deep network in the birding world to engage a vibrant, inclusive birding and activist community across the Pacific Northwest. Working closely with both Conservation and Education, he’ll expand our adult offerings to include trips that elevate our conservation advocacy agenda and showcase conservation priority regions. He’ll also work with Audubon Chapters across the state to organize a network of engaged nature enthusiasts, linking nature appreciation, knowledge-building, and birding to direct conservation action.
On the Conservation side, Karly Chin has joined the team as Activist Program Coordinator. The primary responsibility of this role is to expand, educate, engage, activate, and support Bird Alliance of Oregon’s activist network. She’ll serve as a liaison to other community groups to build support for conservation priorities, integrate Bird Alliance of Oregon’s priorities with other community goals and objectives, and help support and develop conservation campaigns – all with an eye to building on the collaboration with the Conservation and Education team.
Together, the two roles will use input from community partners to develop and deliver an Activist Training program to provide new and existing volunteers with the knowledge and skills to be effective advocates, support campaigns to advance Bird Alliance of Oregon’s conservation priorities, and facilitate coordination across the organization, coalition building, and community outreach.