WHAT:
Newton Conservators’ First-Ever Outdoor Annual Dinner Meeting
WHEN:
Wednesday May 24, 2023
5:00 p.m. Social gathering with hors d’oeuvres and cash bar
6:30 p.m. Dinner, business meeting, awards ceremony and keynote speaker
WHERE:
Under a tent on the University of Massachusetts, Amherst’s beautiful Mount Ida Campus in Newton
100 Carlson Avenue – Newton, MA
AWARDS:
Environmentalist of the Year:
Marcia Cooper
President, Green Newton
Directors’ Awards
Luis Perez Demorizi
Director of Parks & Open Space, Newton
Ruth Balser
State Representative, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Philip Saunders, Jr. (posthumously accepted by Elizabeth Saunders)
Organizer, Public Lands Protection Act
PRESENTATION:
Snowy Owls to Saw-whet Owls
Featuring Norman Smith
Raptor Specialist, Mass Audubon
Since 1981, Norman Smith has spent countless days and nights, in every imaginable weather condition, observing, capturing, banding and relocating snowy owls at Logan International Airport. Data has been collected on roosting, hunting and behavior while on their wintering grounds. Since 2000, satellite transmitters have been attached to owls to learn more about their movements. Find out what has been learned to date, what questions remain and how this project developed to include research on saw-whet owls.
Norman Smith is a self-taught naturalist who has worked for Massachusetts Audubon since 1974. He recently retired as Director of Blue Hills Trailside Museum and Norman Smith Environmental Education Center in Milton, Massachusetts, where he had worked for over 50 years, and has taken on a part-time role to continue his research on raptors.
Norman has studied birds of prey for over 45 years, including rehabilitating the injured and successfully fostering over 1,000 orphaned hawk and owl chicks into adoptive nests. His ongoing long-term projects include trapping and banding migrating hawks and owls in the Blue Hills Reservation, banding nestling hawks and owls, and doing research on snowy owls and other raptors wintering at Boston’s Logan International Airport. He has also traveled to Alaska to study snowy owls in their native tundra habitat. His research work has been published in National Geographic, National Wildlife, Ranger Rick, Yankee, Massachusetts Wildlife, Bird Observer, Birding, Sanctuary, Geo, Nature, Grolier Encyclopedia, Owls of the Northern Hemisphere and Owls of the World.
His mission is to use the information gathered from his research to stimulate a passion in everyone he meets to help us better understand, appreciate and care for this world in which we live.
REGISTER:
Tickets are $45. Please reserve by May 15
https://newtonconservators.org/events/2023-annual-meeting-may-24-2023/
DONATE: (in lieu of attending)
https://newtonconservators.org/ways-to-give/
SPONSORS:
Thank you to our generous sponsors! (* List as of March 24, 2023)
Nahanton Paddler / Platinum Sponsor:
Paddle Boston
Dolan Pond Nester / Gold Sponsor:
Lalor and Patricia Burdick
Lucy Caldwell-Stair
The Village Bank
Crystal Lake Swimmer / Silver Sponsors:
Crystal Lake Conservancy
NCF Harvester / Friends:
Fulfilled Goods LLC
Willis Wang
