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For Immediate Release:
Contact: Cathy Carroll, communications and promotions manager,
541.382.4754 ext. 300; ccarroll@highdesertmuseum.org
High Desert Museum, 59800 S. Hwy. 97, Bend, Ore. 97702
www.highdesertmuseum.org
CAPTION for attached photo: James Dawson, an internationally
recognized expert on raptors, with Marie the Harris’s
Hawk , at the High Desert Museum, where Dawson is the new
curator of wildlife. Photo and Video Credit: Lee Schaefer/High
Desert Museum
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Internationally Recognized Expert in Raptors
Joins High Desert Museum
Award-winning raptor
researcher and filmmaker James Dawson expanding Museum’s
live animal programs.
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Bend, Ore. – James Dawson, an internationally recognized
expert on raptors, has joined the High Desert Museum as curator
of living collections. For more than 30 years, Dawson has
worked for wildlife conservation, and as a raptor biologist, he
has specialized in research on eagles, hawks, falcons and owls.
His has done field research in every desert and with nearly
every species of raptor in North America. Outside of the United
States, he led the first field project to investigate the
endangered St. Lucia parrot on the island of St. Lucia in the
Lesser Antilles. Last year, he established bird survey routes
in the Tropical Deciduous Forest in Mexico. His research
specialty has been the social behavior of the Harris’s
Hawk, and he is considered an authority on this beautiful dark
hawk that hunts throughout the Sonora Desert.
During his career, Dawson has written scientific papers, book
chapters, and magazine articles. In 1995, he wrote and
co-produced the documentary “Wolves of the Air,” a
film about Harris’s Hawks produced by the National
Geographic Society, which airs regularly on the National
Geographic Channel. The film won an Emmy Award, and also
garnered the Animal Behavior Society’s Best Film
Award. Dawson’s approach to conservation is based
on centered solutions that address the needs of all
stakeholders, and seek solutions to human-wildlife conflict. He
has worked with such diverse groups as the Department of
Energy, Westinghouse Electric, mines and prisons. He recently
has partnered with utility and power companies in Arizona to
prevent accidental electrocutions of birds that perch on power
poles. Working with power companies, he organized a series of
workshops to help them create and launch avian protection
programs. “Education is the key to understanding the
world we live in, and scientists have an obligation to bring
science to the public,” said Dawson. “I also feel
strongly that people must make both intellectual and emotional
connections with the natural world to understand and appreciate
it.”To help the public better understand raptors and
birds of prey, Dawson developed a unique approach to
demonstrating live birds flying free in natural habitats. This
program model emphasized the inherent beauty and majesty of
wildlife, and minimized the theatrics of most zoo bird shows.
His exploratory effort with this concept, the Raptor Free
Flight Program, has been the premier animal program at the
prestigious Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson, Arizona,
for more than a decade.
At the High Desert Museum, Dawson has begun incorporating the
Raptor Free Flight Program into two daily Desert Dwellers shows
that feature live animals throughout the summer. During most of
the shows, the Harris’s hawk swoops over the heads of
visitors. A red-tailed hawk and barn owl also fly in the show
that includes visits from badgers, porcupines and reptiles.
“Throughout time, wildlife and people have always been
inextricably linked, a relationship that remains just as
important today,” he said. “Museum programs offer a
unique opportunity to reconnect with the natural world, the
historic past, and the future. It’s exciting to build new
programs that will bring people eye to eye with the wild
creatures that have shaped our history so strongly.” Vice
President of Programs Dana Whitelaw said, “The
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum inspired Donald Kerr in his
creation of the High Desert Museum. It is an incredible
connection for us now to have James Dawson as our curator of
living collections. His experience and perspective deepens the
quality of our educational programs that touch so many school
children and lifelong learners who visit here every
day.”
About the Museum
The High Desert Museum is nationally acclaimed for inspiring
stewardship of the natural and cultural resources of the High
Desert. It offers close-up wildlife encounters, living history
performances, Native American and Western art, music, nature
trails, tours and classes for all ages. It is on 135 forested
acres, five minutes from Bend on South Highway 97.
The Museum is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and admission rates
are: adults, $15; seniors (65 plus), $12; ages 5-12, $9; age 4
and younger, free.