Due to insufficient participation, we regret that the 2023 HMBC Annual Banquet at Century House is cancelled. All registration fees will be refunded back to the original credit  card on which they were charged.

The Annual Business Meeting and Program will be held remotely via Zoom at the same date and  times as previously scheduled. Look for separate Zoom invitation emails.

• 7:00 p.m.            Annual Business Meeting
• 8:00 p.m.            Program:

Audubon's Migratory Bird Initiative

Speaker: Chad Witko, Senior Coordinator, Avian Biology, National Audubon Society

The mission of the Migratory Bird Initiative is to secure the future of migratory birds in the Western Hemisphere by reducing direct threats and protecting key places across the Americas in coordination with science, conservation and policy partners.

The Initiative brings together the latest spatial information on species distributions and movements across their annual cycles to identify priority areas for 458 species of migratory birds that regularly occur in the United States and Canada. We will use this information to define where and how to focus Audubon’s conservation investments in order to protect, restore and manage key habitat and also mitigate threats along full migratory pathways for these species.

As Senior Coordinator, Chad Witko communicates about the Migratory Bird Initiative and other science programs within Audubon, working with data and knowledge holders across the Western Hemisphere to build relationships and acquire migratory bird datasets. Through this work, he is a principal contributor to the development of the Bird Migration Explorer.

As an expert birder and ornithologist, Chad provides a lifetime of birding knowledge and nearly twenty years of field experience to the National Science Division at Audubon.

Chad holds a BS in Environmental and Forest Biology from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an MS in Conservation Biology and a Certificate in Applied Spatial Analysis for GIS from Antioch University New England. He currently resides in Vermont with his partner and daughter.