Birding Festivals in the Adirondacks:
2015 Great Adirondack Birding Celebration
Keynote Speaker Chris Rimmer
Bicknell’s Thrush: Conserving a Bird of Two Worlds
Saturday, 6 June 2015, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
Free for GABC registrants. $10 a la carte.
The keynote speaker for the 2015 Great Adirondack Birding Celebration is Chris Rimmer, speaking on "Bicknell’s Thrush: Conserving a Bird of Two Worlds." The Bicknell’s Thrush is one of North America’s most rare and vulnerable songbirds. Nesting only in mountaintop forests of northern New England and New York, and wintering primarily on the island of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), Bicknell’s Thrush faces numerous threats to its long-term survival. On its breeding grounds, these include acid precipitation, ski area development, communications tower construction, wind power development, mercury contamination, and climate change. The species’ limited winter habitats are under siege from deforestation, caused by human population pressures. Since 1992, Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) Executive Director Chris Rimmer has led efforts to conserve the species and these habitats on which it depends. Rimmer will discuss this fascinating and rare songbird, VCE’s efforts to study it in New England and the Caribbean, and how Bicknell’s Thrush represents a vital conservation link across international boundaries.
About the speaker: Chris Rimmer is Executive Director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, a non-profit wildlife conservation group based in Norwich, Vermont. He completed undergraduate studies in Wildlife Biology at the University of Vermont and graduate work in Ecology and Behavioral Biology at the University of Minnesota, where he studied Yellow Warblers on the James Bay coast of Ontario. Prior to his graduate studies, Chris was an itinerant field biologist, with stints in Peru, Ellesmere Island, James Bay, coastal Massachusetts (Manomet Bird Observatory), and Antarctica. Much of his recent work has focused on conservation research of Bicknell’s Thrush at both ends of its migratory range, from New York and New England to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.