North House Folk School

FEATURED PRESENTATION:

This program will be held outdoors to accommodate pandemic conditions. It is free and open to the public. Please dress accordingly. 

Saturday, June 4, 7:00pm

Owls of the Eastern Ice: Blakiston’s Fish Owl Conservation in Russia with Jonathan C. Slaght, PhD

From 2006-2010, Jonathan Slaght studied Blakiston’s fish owls in Russia for his PhD degree in Wildlife Conservation at the University of Minnesota. These are enormous salmon-eating birds that live in some of the hardest-to-reach corners of northeast Asia. Slaght’s memoir of this experience, called Owls of the Eastern Ice, was published in summer 2020 to acclaim. It was named a New York Times Notable Book for 2020, longlisted for a 2020 National Book Award, called one of the Ten Best Books of 2020 by the Wall Street Journal, and won the 2021 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Here, he will describe the owls and his project, including details of the adventures and struggles of fieldwork, and on-going conservation efforts with this endangered species.

Slaght is the Russia & Northeast Asia Coordinator for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). He manages research projects involving endangered species such as Blakiston’s fish owls and Amur tigers, and coordinates WCS avian conservation activities along the East Asia-Australasian Flyway from the Russian Arctic to the mudflats of Southeast Asia. Slaght’s writings, scientific research, and photographs have been featured by the BBC World Service, the New York Times, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, The New Yorker, and Audubon Magazine, among others. Owls of the Eastern Ice is his first book.