Future of Birding

My background in watching birds started as a job when I was an environmental educator, now it’s how I identify myself in the environmental movement. I want more people to know that birding is a vessel – not just for a connection to nature – but as a connection to the environmental movement itself. 

After nearly a decade of birding it’s clear that it’s never just been about the birds, it’s about the people and land: unearthing the roots of shared habitat and history. 

Part of my motivation to co-create Freedom Birders came after realizing we cannot work at the pace normalized by white fragility and white moderates to achieve racial justice or to dismantle the systems and beliefs that perpetuate inequities in society today, especially in the birding community. 

I hope you share my inspiration for the future of birding because I believe it can and should be a decolonized and liberating activity forevermore. 

Advancing justice in society takes many forms, but I am only inspired by the enduring solutions that center intersectionality and taking action. Forming and uplifting existing interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and multicultural relationships is necessary to the success of this project. 

I’m deeply humbled to start this chapter of the project today to remember our CORE inspiration: the Freedom Rides. 

I believe the Freedom Birders project can galvanize around a message of unity that is motivated by our diversity and that collectively we can find peace in the initial uncertainty of the unfamiliar because we value the future of birding.

I’m inspired to dedicate my life to address social inequities as a birder, I’m proud I’ve made a great friend in the creation of this project, and I look forward to the day that we can all bird free.