WILD AND WONDERFUL
SPEAKER SERIES
This monthly online Speaker Series will showcase our outstanding roster of naturalists, filmmakers, ornithologists, photographers, and other fascinating speakers.
​
Expect our Speaker Series email alerts the day before our scheduled online events. The emails will have important details including our Zoom link and passcode. Our online Speaker Series has a first come, first serve sign-in basis with a limit of 100 participants. If you’d like to sign up for our general emails, including our Speaker Series email alerts, please contact us at admin@swwings.org. Use buttons below to register for individual talks.
Each of our online Speaker Series presentations will begin at 11 AM Arizona Time. There is no cost to sign in to our online series; but, if you would like to make a donation to Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival, please see the Home Page.
​
A recorded version of the last talk will be available for several weeks afterwards - here.
​
See a full list of future talks - here.
​
DIANA HADLEY
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2020 at 11 AM Arizona Time
​
Northern Jaguar Project
Renowned for their power, strength, beauty and grace, jaguars once roamed across much of the southern United States. Today, these magnificent predators are vanishing throughout the Americas. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the US/Mexico borderlands. Removed from their historic northern range by poaching and habitat fragmentation, jaguars have all but disappeared from the US portion of their former territory, yet they still persist just south of the international border in Sonora, Mexico. Jaguars are known to cross from Mexico into the US, but how many, and what is the impact of border wall construction? This beautifully illustrated presentation, by Diana Hadley, features Sonora’s 55,000 acre Northern Jaguar Reserve and provides information on the Northern Jaguar Project’s work.
​
Diana Hadley is a founding member and president of the Northern Jaguar Project (NJP), a bi-national non-profit dedicated to preserving the northernmost breeding population of jaguars on the continent. She is an environmental historian who retired from the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona as associate curator of ethnohistory. The former operator of a cattle ranch in Cochise County, her interest in resolution of livestock wildlife conflicts led her to involvement in jaguar conservation. Currently, she assists NJP in management of the 55,000-acre Northern Jaguar Reserve, which provides a safe-haven for jaguars and other wildlife in a remarkably biodiverse portion of the Sierra Madre foothills in Sonora, Mexico, only 120 miles south of the international boundary.
KATHE ANDERSON
WEDNESDAY, February 24, 2020 at 11 AM Arizona Time
Bluebirds, Robins and Thrushes
These melodious songsters are popular and widely known from all parts of the United States, however Arizona has its own collection of this family of birds. This webinar, by Kathe Anderson, will emphasize the common species, including eastern and western bluebirds, hermit thrushes, robins and Townsend’s solitaires, in Arizona (and beyond), looking at their identification and backstory.
Kathe Anderson is an avid birder, leading bird walks, teaching classes, and participating in bird surveys, among other birdy activities. She’s led hundreds of walks for individuals, conservation organizations, private groups, and life-long learning programs, and taught scores of hands-on birding-related classes for nature festivals, Arizona State University’s Osher Life-long Learning Program, The Nature Conservancy, state parks and numerous local conservation organizations. She loves sharing her passion with others.
Jim Koweek is the owner of Arizona Revegetation & Monitoring Co. and the author of Grassland Plant ID For Everyone – Except Folks That Take Boring Technical Stuff Too Seriously. For the last four decades he has worked with seed, plants and rock in SE Arizona. The results are not always pretty. In his spare time, he can be found playing mandolin in local watering holes around Sonoita.
PREVIOUS TALKS
​
If you missed the talk below, you can watch it again until January 26, 2021. To view, please CLICK HERE
​
JIM KOWEEK
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2020 at 11 AM Arizona Time
​
Grassland Plant ID Made Easy
This talk, by Jim Koweek, will cover local plant ID with an emphasis on the plants' relationship with wildlife. Best of all, this will be done with no boring technical language.
​
LIST OF UPCOMING ONLINE SPEAKER TALKS
​
2021
JANUARY 27: Northern Jaguar Project: Protecting the World’s Northernmost Jaguars - Diana Hadley
FEBRUARY 24: Bluebirds, Robins and Thrushes - Kathe Anderson
MARCH 24: Twelve New Clouds - Glenn Minuth
APRIL 28: Wildlife, Rescue, Rehabilitation, Release and Coexistence - Angeline Fahey
​
This list may be subject to change
​