Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance

Wildlife sanctuaries: Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (sowba) actively protected, restored, and managed over 2000 acres at its goose pond and faville grove sanctuaries. Sowba also added a brand-new wildlife sanctuary at fair meadows, a 374-acre beautifully-restored property that is also a state natural area. We continued performing high-quality habitat conservation, including prairie planting, native seed collection (from 400+ native species), prescribed burns, and wildlife/plant surveys. We hosted 11 summer interns and ran impactful volunteer citizen science projects like monarch butterfly tagging, nest monitoring, wildlife surveys, and much more. Countless visitors enjoyed the outdoors at our sanctuaries. We maintain the highest standards for excellence and land conservation permanence and were awarded renewal of national land trust accreditation, a mark of distinction.

Advocacy: along with its members, sowba supported meaningful conservation efforts and advocated widely for environmental justice issues through a blog, newsletter, email, social media, website, and more. We provided significant public outreach through hybrid (in person, streamed online) programs and events. We worked diligently to improve representation in conservation and access to nature for bipoc, lgbtq+, and people with disabilities, including successfully changing our name to better represent our work and communities. We coordinated multiple volunteer-led citizen science efforts across the state, including bald eagle nest watch, now established in over half of the counties around Wisconsin. We also promoted bird-friendly communities through our bird-window collision monitoring and bird-window collision prevention outreach programs. We successfully advocated for the city of madison in upholding the state's first bird-safe glass ordinance that went through a legal battle.

Education: sowba has two full-time educators on our staff! We taught weekly in about 15 classrooms spanning kindergarten through fifth grade. We also work with elementary students at local community centers. Our partnerships are with organizations serving groups with more than half of the kids being people of color or from low-income families. Our fun, hands-on lessons get kids running, exploring, and thinking like scientists. We also provided many adult education programs like birding 101 and birding by ear (for people of all vision abilities) in addition to a variety of field trips welcoming people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities.