Birds Connect Seattle (formerly Seattle Audubon)

Birds Connect Seattle advocates and organizes for cities where people and birds thrive. Since 1916, Birds Connect Seattle members and volunteers have helped protect millions of acres of wild spaces across the Pacific Northwest. Through our environmental education, urban conservation advocacy, and community science programs, Birds Connect Seattle provides people with opportunities to appreciate, understand and protect birds and nature. Whether defending greenways in our urban neighborhoods or protecting vulnerable bird populations in Puget Sound, we are on the front lines of conservation.

Birds Connect Seattle envisions cities that integrate and value nature, minimize threats to birds, a

Goal One: Urban Conservation: Advocate for bird-safe cities and include specific conservation calls-to-action in all our programs.

Goal Two: Equity: Understand and eradicate racial inequity and injustice in our field and in our own organization, shifting our culture and practices to create welcoming spaces.

Goal Three: Resilience: Be excellent stewards of our existing resources, diversify and enhance our funding sources, and maximize retention by developing our staff, board, and leadership.

Birds Connect Seattle launched Hoot Camp in November 2021, as an annual leadership development series for staff, board, and volunteers. Hoot Camp is a response to an immediate need for skills development within our leadership. As representatives of the organization, Birds Connects Seattle volunteers and staff engage with members of the public and serve as important ambassadors for our mission in the community. It is imperative that they represent and model the organization’s values, which center equity, diversity, and inclusion. In order to put our organizational values into practice and promote programs that are truly safe and welcoming for all, Birds Connect Seattle provides a comprehensive multi-day, multi-module training to our staff and leadership volunteers, called Hoot Camp. Participants address the following core competencies: • Implicit bias awareness • Sexual harassment bystander response • Field safety • First Aid / CPR • Conservation advocacy • Leadership skills

In 2020, we updated our mission to state, “Birds Connect Seattle advocates and organizes for cities where people and birds thrive.” to explicitly center human beings in our work for birds. We also updated our vision and values statements to celebrate the interconnectedness of all life, including the essential role that diversity and social justice play in our vision for the future. As a conservation organization, we know that the threats facing birds are immense. And we know that the ideologies and institutions that exploit and degrade nature also exploit and degrade people, particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). The fight to protect birds and nature is not separate from the fight for equity and justice, and to succeed at one we must succeed at both. Birds Connect Seattle is committed to identifying and dismantling systems of oppression in our organization and our community, and to reflecting the human diversity of our cities in our board, staff, volunteers, and members. We believe that ongoing investments in this work will lead to systemic change, a healthier environment, and community solidarity over the long run.