Tag Archive for: Stretch our Parks

Sunday, January 7, 2024
3 – 4 pm
Virtual
FREE but registration required.

Join Audubon Society of Northern Virginia for a virtual Audubon Afternoon that features the first of their Stretch Our Parks Lectures featuring Dr. Charles Nilon, an ecologist and professor from the University of Missouri.

Dr. Nilon’s decades of research and service have combined two of his lifelong passions – understanding how to safeguard urban biodiversity and making conservation biology more inclusive. He has been a lead researcher on projects combining data from more than 150 of the world’s cities to assess how ecological and socioeconomic factors influence birds in urban environments. He will share his ideas about what actions cities and towns might take to protect biodiversity as human density increases, and why making conservation efforts more diverse, inclusive, and just is paramount to their success.

Stretch Our Parks is a community-based conservation initiative. Given that northern Virginia is increasingly urbanizing, with more than a million new residents added since 1990, and that the diversity of our residents also has increased, it is fitting that Dr. Nilon presents the first Stretch Our Parks Lecture.

Dr. Nilon has a B.S. in Biology from Morehouse College, a Masters of Forest Science with an emphasis on wildlife from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Ecology/Wildlife Ecology from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Dr. Nilon was awarded the Ecological Society of America’s Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology Award in 2014. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Audubon Center at Riverlands, a Migratory Bird Sanctuary approximately 20 miles north of St. Louis.