This special Field Talk will take you into the wild for a discussion of snowy owl conservation efforts. Dave Brinker, Ecologist with Maryland’s Wildlife & Heritage Service, will speak about the status of wild snowy owls and a collaborative project known as Project SNOWStorm devoted to studying snowy owls. Learn what field experts are doing to conserve these majestic animals and how the Maryland Zoo is helping to support conservation efforts.

Doors open at 6:30; talk begins promptly at 7:00. Event features light refreshments, cash bar also available.

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Tickets:

  • Member: $10
  • Non-member: $20

Zoo members, to receive your ticket discount you must first register on the Zoo’s online store. Click below to register. Once you do, you’ll automatically receive your discounts at checkout.

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Additional donations on event night are encouraged to support Project SNOWStorm.

Featured speaker, Dave Brinker:

As a regional ecologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ Natural Heritage Program since 1990, Dave works on biodiversity conservation, where he specializes on colonial nesting waterbirds and marshbirds, as well as working on freshwater mussels, tiger beetles and odonates. He began banding raptors at the Little Suamico Ornithological Station in 1975, and has been banding Northern Saw-whet Owls in Maryland since 1986, and at Assateague Island since 1991. He founded the continental collaborative banding effort Project Owlnet in 1994. During his free time he studies Northern Goshawks in West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania and has experience with RF, GSM and satellite telemetry on Black Skimmers, Northern Goshawks, Northern Saw-whet and Snowy Owls. He recently co-founded and is a principal in Project SNOWstorm.

Dave is one of the three principals in the Northeast Motus Collaboration that is working to expand the inland footprint of the Motus array that tracks small migrating organisms using RF telemetry. He has authored and coauthored a variety of peer-reviewed papers, including topics such as Red-tailed Hawk and Northern Saw-whet Owl migration, goshawk population change, and colonial nesting waterbird trends. Dave was presented with the Pennsylvania Falconry Association’s Conservationist of the Year award in 2018 for his work on Northern Goshawks in the Central Appalachians. He has appeared frequently on Maryland Public Television’s Outdoors Maryland, and has also been interviewed and heard on National Geographic Today, on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and on Living on Earth.

For questions, contact us at public.programs@marylandzoo.org or 443.992.4611.