2027 Jackson Hole Birding Festival
Featured Speakers
Thursday, May 27
Walter Wehtje
The return of life is interconnected. When bison return to the prairie, birds return to the sky. When food systems heal, culture follows. When relationship is restored, belonging emerges.
In this program, Indigenous leader Lisa Marie Ansell Frazier invites us into a living story of restoration—one rooted in relationship rather than control. Drawing from Indigenous ecological knowledge, seventh-generation responsibility, and hands-on bison restoration work, she explores how birds serve as living indicators of prairie health and how the return of buffalo signals the renewal of land, food systems, culture, and community.
Through the lens of the Buffalo Youth Nation Project, Lisa reflects on the deep interdependence between birds, bison, people, and place. She reframes conservation as an act of remembrance: remembering who we are in relationship to the land, and who the land is to us. This conversation illuminates how true restoration is not only ecological but cultural and spiritual—restoring balance, nourishment, and belonging for future generations.
About the Speaker
Lisa Marie Ansell Frazier is an Indigenous nonprofit director and founder of the Buffalo Youth Nation Project, a Native-led organization dedicated to food sovereignty, youth nourishment, cultural restoration, and the return of bison. Her work centers on rebuilding reciprocal relationships between land, animals, and community through bison herd restoration, community food programs, and culturally rooted education. Guided by Indigenous stewardship practices, Lisa’s holistic approach to conservation recognizes that when the buffalo return, so too do the birds, medicines, balance, and a renewed sense of belonging.
Thursday, May 27
Tom Murphy presents
Woodpeckers are the heart of North American forests in many ways. Their distinctive drumming sounds out a familiar rhythm, while their presence supports owls and a myriad other creatures. They have evolved in ways that make them ecologically critical to forest health, serving as keystone species in a variety of wooded habitats across the continent.
A dynamic public speaker, Paul Bannick will present a beautiful and informative multimedia program called “Woodpeckers of the Inland West.” based upon his new book, Woodpecker: A Year in the Life of North American Woodpeckers.
Paul examines woodpeckers in every season: their courtship and nest selection in spring; life in the nest during summer; fledging and gaining independence in autumn; and the challenges of surviving the winter.
About the Speaker
Paul Bannick is an award-winning author and photographer who makes images to inspire education and conservation.
Paul is both the author and photographer of five books (all published by Mountaineers Books/Braided River), including two best-selling books, Owl: A Year in the Lives of North American Owls and The Owl and The Woodpecker, Encounters with North America’s Most Iconic Birds, as well as Snowy Owl: A Visual Natural History and Great Gray Owl: A Visual Natural History.
Owl: A Year in the Lives of North American Owls received the Gold Medal in the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards “Animals and Pets” category. The Owl and the Woodpecker was a runner-up to the Washington State Book Award.
Friday, May 28
Tom Murphy
Tom Murphy’s passion and specialty is Yellowstone National Park: Since 1975 he has traveled extensively within its 3,400 square miles, hiking and skiing thousands of miles on extended backcountry trips, including three ski crossings of the park, the first a solo 14-day, 175-mile trek in 1985. He’s driven by a desire to experience Yellowstone’s wilderness and to photograph the behaviors of free-roaming wildlife alongside the colors, shapes, and textures of the land.
You might recognize Tom from the PBS Nature episode “Christmas in Yellowstone,” which airs regularly worldwide, and chronicles his journey into the frozen depths of the park. His photography is held in private, public, and museum collections around the globe. A talented naturalist and gifted lecturer, he has traveled the U.S. presenting his photographic slide shows.
Tom will speak on::
https://www.tmurphywild.com/
Friday, May 28
Denver Holt presents
The ORI is one of the most active owl research groups in the world. Their organization is reinvigorating the essence of “boots on the ground” field research. For over 40 years, Denver and the ORI have been dedicated to the pursuit of in-depth and long-lasting studies that illuminate the enigmatic world of owls and their intricate ecology. Listeners will come away with a comprehensive understanding of why long-term studies are essential for revealing population trends, changes in climate, and unraveling these complex ecological puzzles for long-term survival and conservation strategies for owls in general.
About the Speaker
Denver’s research has been published in many academic journals. He is currently the team leader for Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Snowy Owl species account, as well as an authority who has been acknowledged by the media, including a cover story for National Geographic Magazine in Dec. 2002 and a feature in the New York Times in 2011.
His work has been the subject of many television bits on all the major networks, as well as featured on Audubon’s Up-Close series, PBS’s Bird Watch, Disney, and David Attenborough’s Life of Birds, and the film The Magic of the Snowy Owl, among others. His research on Snowy Owls has been showcased on documentaries for National Geographic Explorer, NHK Natural History Unit of Japan, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Company Natural History Unit. It has also been the focus of the British Broadcasting Company’s (BBC) documentary series Frozen Earth, a sequel to the highly acclaimed Planet Earth series. In 2011, Denver worked closely with a PBS documentary film crew featuring the breeding ecology of the Snowy Owl at his research site in Barrow, Alaska. Denver has also been the keynote speaker for many major bird festivals in the United States and gave a TEDxBozeman talk in 2023. We’re happy to welcome him back to Jackson for a second year!
