Awards

The Black Hills Conservation Committee is very pleased to announce that Anne Van Sweringen has been chosen for the Jack Davis Conservationist of the Year Award for 2022.  Her untiring and lengthy service in pursuit of environmental protections makes her an outstanding choice.  It isn’t practical to list everything Anne has accomplished in her years with Black Hills Audubon and other organizations. ...

It is with great pleasure that the Board of Black Hills Audubon announces the recipient of our 2022 Volunteer of the Year Award to long-time volunteer Sue Danver.  As a member of the BHAS Conservation Committee, Sue Danver has pro-actively carried the ball for land conservation in Thurston County for at least the past twenty years.  During part of that time, she was chair of the Conservation Committee. ...

Deb Nickerson hardly needs an introduction to members of Black Hills Audubon. She joined our organization in 1999 and has been on the board for more than 20 years. Her activities ranged from Feeder Cleaning Coordinator, Secretary, Education Chair, Outreach Chair, and Communications Chair. She was instrumental in helping establish the popular Birds and Beer and co-founded Birding and Breakfast, a local...

Stephanie Estrella is founder and operator of Raindancer Wild Bird Rescue. This rehabilitation facility is located in Olympia and handles 200-300 raptors and corvids per year. For the past eight years, she has cared for about five to thirty orphaned, sick, or injured birds at a time, rehabilitating and releasing those that she can and placing some birds that cannot be released into educational programs...

For the past seven years, Maria Ruth has been involved with the Long-Term Conservation Strategy for the Marbled Murrelet that is being developed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Maria is the author of the definitive book, Rare Bird, that brought to the general public the saga of solving the mystery of where murrelets nest; namely, on high branches of old growth trees often many miles...