FEBRUARY 2024 PROGRAM

Bird Banding at Spring Meadow Lake State Park

Tuesday, February 13, 2024 – Program begins 7:00PM

Montana WILD, 2668 Broadwater Ave.

Free – All Are Welcome

Join Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ (FWP) Kristina Smucker and Montana WILD’s Corie Bowditch to learn about bird banding efforts happening here in Helena. For the past 2 years, FWP has run a Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) bird banding station at Spring Meadow Lake State Park and has opened that station for the public to observe. MAPS is a continent-wide collaborative effort among public agencies, non-governmental groups and individuals to assist in the conservation of birds and their habitats through bird banding. This program will describe what a MAPS banding station looks like, what data is collected and what scientists hope to learn from that data.  The importance of education and citizen science in relation to bird conservation will also be discussed.

Kristina Smucker is the Nongame Wildlife Bureau Chief at FWP. She leads an all-star team of wildlife biologists that manage and conserve over 500 nongame species in Montana. Prior to that she worked at the Avian Science Center at the University of Montana for 10 years where she directed bird research and monitoring programs.  She obtained her MS in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana and her BA in Biology from Earlham College in Indiana where she took Ornithology and fell in love with birds during spring migration.

Corie Bowditch is Montana WILD’s program manager. Her passion for environmental education began during her time as a camp counselor for a wilderness exploration camp in northern Minnesota. After moving to Montana and graduating with a degree in Organismal Biology from Montana State University, she became an instructor and eventually the summer program director for Montana Outdoor Science School in Bozeman. Since 2018 she has been working as an educator for Montana FWP in Helena.