Climate change is already changing Florida. As carbon accumulates in the atmosphere and the planet warms, we face more extreme storms, rising sea levels, drought, and intense heat. As a result of these combined threats, coastal bird populations have declined by more than 70 percent, and two thirds of North America’s bird species face extinction if we fail to keep warming below 1.5°C.
Audubon Florida’s annual Assembly is showing how Florida’s birds can stay safe, by embracing Natural Climate Solutions, through a series of virtual and in-person events Oct. 23 – Nov. 9. The keynote presentation, “A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds” will be presented by Scott Weidensaul on Nov. 9 at 6 p.m.
Even as scientists make astounding discoveries about the navigational and physiological feats that enable migratory birds to cross immense oceans or fly above the highest mountains, go weeks without sleep or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch, humans have brought many migrants to the brink. Based on his newest book "A World on the Wing," author and researcher Scott Weidensaul takes you around the globe -- with researchers in the lab probing the limits of what migrating birds can do, to the shores of the Yellow Sea in China, the remote mountains of northeastern India where tribal villages saved the greatest gathering of falcons on the planet, and the Mediterannean, where activists and police are battle bird poachers -- to learn how people are fighting to understand and save the world's great bird migrations.
Scott Weidensaul is the author of more than two dozen books on natural history, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist "Living on the Wind" and his latest, the New York Times bestseller "A World on the Wing." Weidensaul is a contributing editor for Audubon, a columnist for Bird Watcher's Digest and writes for a variety of other publications, including Living Bird. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and an active field researcher, studying saw-whet owl migration for more than two decades, as well as winter hummingbirds, bird migration in Alaska, and the winter movements of snowy owls through Project SNOWstorm, which he co-founded. A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in New Hampshire.
Tickets are available for all virtual aspects of Audubon Assembly, including the learning sessions, panel discussions, chapter celebration, awards ceremony, and Keynote Presentation, for $15, at Fl.Audubon.org/assembly.
Audubon Florida protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow. Audubon works throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education, and on-the-ground conservation. State programs, nature centers, chapters, and partners give Audubon an unparalleled wingspan that reaches millions of people each year to inform, inspire, and unite diverse communities in conservation action. A nonprofit conservation organization since 1905, Audubon believes in a world in which people and wildlife thrive.
