Audubon Leadership Conference 2025
By Whitney Grover
Every two years, National Audubon hosts a conference for chapter leaders, campus chapters, partner organizations, and state and national representatives. This year, the conference was held in Montreal, Canada, and I had the honor of attending and representing Golden Gate Bird Alliance. Physically being near the boreal forest and the northern stretch of our North American migrant’s range kept the hemispheric focus of Audubon’s bird conservation top of mind. The theme of the conference this year was “soaring together.” As one speaker put it best, it’s easy to gloss over the phrase as cliché, but when you think about it, the meaning is bold.
The biggest takeaway for me was, indeed, this concept of working together for a common goal. There are armies of us out there, spread all across North and South America, and we all care about the same thing. If we can work in our separate regions, but in a more coordinated way, we really can accomplish our high-level goal of bending the bird curve. The heart of this coordination and strategy is National Audubon’s current strategic plan Flight Plan, bringing this home and applying it locally is how our coordination will continue beyond this quick gathering.
The conference held sessions on branding, strategic diplomacy, EDIB conservation principles, inclusivity in Christmas Bird Count organizing, building a high impact board, MOTUS, storytelling sessions, and special breakout sessions for large-staffed chapters (which we are considered, the cutoff for “large” being over 5 full-time staff). But beyond the programming, I learned so much from other chapter leaders and met some amazing people. I talked forest management with conservationists who had been working in the field for as long as I’ve been alive. I learned how information acquired from bird banding stations can be applied from campus chapter undergraduates just finding their place in this work. I learned strategies for welcoming underserved communities from small towns and metropolises.
In the storytelling sessions, I presented our Birding for Everyone Fellowship program in a panel focused on “Community Driven Programming.” It was motivating and heartening to see all the faces in the room representing so many different towns and cities, all their excellent questions, all there because they care about what we care about. I shared the stage with representatives from NYC Bird Alliance and DC Bird Alliance, and we all brought to the room our experiences and learnings of what works and what doesn’t work in serving communities previously left behind by our conservation and birding communities.
And then there were field trips! At one park, I saw more Yellow Warblers than I had seen in my life, just in that one small urban park. I saw a Red-eyed Vireo feeding young, and I heard the mournful call of a Black-billed Cuckoo in between showers. I learned the word “Squall” when it came in on a weather alert (lifelong coastal Californian here). I joined a bird-banding station and got to hold a young robin nervously (both of us were nervous) after having just been banded.
Most of all, I’m excited to bring all this energy and shared knowledge back to Golden Gate Bird Alliance, our communities, our home by the bay, and our bird neighbors who share our urban spaces. These are hard times, but if we work together, we can protect the birds and wildlife we all care about.
Whitney Grover. is the Director of Conservation for Golden Gate Bird Alliance. She participated in Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s 2019 Master Birder class and is a founder of the SF Bay chapter of the Feminist Bird Club.