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About Us
Research Ranch Advisory Team
Conservation biologist Gregory S. Butcher,
Ph.D., is Director of Bird Conservation for the National
Audubon Society. He began working for Audubon as Director
of Citizen Science in December of 2002 and switched to Bird
Conservation in November of 2003. He works out of Audubon’s
Washington DC office. As Director of Bird Conservation, Dr.
Butcher works with the State of the Birds Report, the WatchList
of birds of conservation need, analysis of Christmas Bird
Count data, the Coastal Bird Conservation Program, Important
Bird Areas, BirdLife International, the North American Bird
Conservation Initiative, Partners in Flight, and policy issues
related to migratory birds. He serves on the Executive Committee
of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Recovery Team. He has had a
long association with Christmas Bird Counts, as a participant
since 1965, as a count compiler from 1984-92, and as a researcher
and database manager since 1984.
Dr. Butcher started his career at Cornell
University’s Laboratory of Ornithology as the Director
of Bird Population Studies. Among Butcher's other accomplishments
at Cornell, he helped launch Project FeederWatch, an annual
survey of birds that visit feeders in winter, and the National
Science Experiments, in which citizen scientists collect data
to answer research questions about breeding habitat requirements
of tanagers, birdseed preferences, and pigeon behavior and
coloration. He pursued conservation biology research involving
birds in agricultural habitats, winter bird population dynamics,
and nesting success of birds.
As Executive Director of the American
Birding Association from 1992 to 1998, Greg spearheaded the
addition of education and conservation initiatives to the
ABA program agenda. Under Butcher's leadership, ABA's membership
grew from 11,500 to 20,000 in 5 years. In recent years, Butcher
served as editor of Birder’s World magazine and then
as the Midwest Coordinator for Partners In Flight, an international
coalition of federal and state agencies, non-governmental
organizations, ornithologists, and corporations for the conservation
of migratory land birds. While working for Partners in Flight,
Butcher served on the species assessment technical committee,
which determined many of the scores that underlie Audubon’s
WatchList of bird species of high conservation priority.
Dr. Butcher is an elective member of the
American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU), past president
of the Association of Field Ornithologists, and past chair
of the nongovernmental organizations and monitoring committees
of Partners in Flight. He has field experience in Costa Rica,
where he completed the Tropical Ecology course of the Organization
for Tropical Studies, organized a symposium and field workshop
on monitoring bird populations at the First International
Wildlife Management Congress, and helped to organize a joint
meeting of the American Birding Association, Association of
Field Ornithologists, and Costa Rican Ornithologists’
Association that attracted more than 400 participants.
Dr. Butcher earned his Ph.D. in Zoology
from the University of Washington, where he studied the coloration
and breeding behavior of Bullock’s Orioles, and his
B.A. in Zoology from Connecticut College, where he studied
the importance of habitat fragmentation to the decline of
breeding birds in the Connecticut Arboretum.
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