About Bill Volkert
Bill worked as the naturalist and wildlife educator for Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources at Horicon Marsh for 27 years, where he conducted more than 3,700 education programs for over 220,000 people. His broad audiences included professional training for 66 delegations of scientists from 43 countries.
In his personal time, he has traveled widely in search of the world's birds and the wild places they inhabit. His adventures have taken him over 40 countries, traveling throughout Central and South America, across the Canadian Arctic, to Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Borneo, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Mongolia. From September 2014 to April 2015, Bill and his wife Connie took a seven-and-a-half-month around the world trip. They sighted more than 120 kinds of mammals and over 1,300 species of birds, including over a thousand lifers, and took more than 35,000 pictures.
Bill has been watching and studying birds for 50 years and in his travels has sighted nearly 4,400 species. To facilitate his studies, he is also a federally licensed master bird bander, with the Bird Banding Laboratory of the U.S. Geological Survey.
His work experience includes assisting the Russian Natural Resources Agency (formerly Goscomecologia, Buryatia) and the Russian Academy of Sciences to further protection of Lake Baikal, located in Siberia, Russia. From 1991 to 2004 he made 8 trips to the Republic of Buryatia to work on various projects to protect Lake Baikal and two trips to Mongolia to focus efforts on the Selenga River watershed, the largest river flowing into Lake Baikal. Since 2002, he has worked with ornithologists and environmental educators to develop a National Bird Conservation Education Plan for Nicaragua and establish a national strategy for protecting Nicaragua's threatened and endangered birds. He has made 18 trips to Nicaragua continues to support various bird conservation projects in the country and also leads birding tours to Nicaragua.
Bill and Connie make their home in the northern Kettle Moraine area of east-central Wisconsin. Here they work together to restore and manage a series of native plant communities on their land, including an oak-hickory forest, a planted prairie community and native plant nursery, and manage various types of wetlands. On this land, they have now identified more than 700 species of plants and animals, including 211 species of birds.
Bill shares his experiences and understanding of the natural world through lectures, presentations, field trips and the media. He has been a regular guest on Wisconsin Public Radio for more than 30 years with over 200 appearances as Wisconsin's bird expert. He is also working on several writing projects that will give these presentations more permanence and reach an even wider public.
Bill worked as the naturalist and wildlife educator for Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources at Horicon Marsh for 27 years, where he conducted more than 3,700 education programs for over 220,000 people. His broad audiences included professional training for 66 delegations of scientists from 43 countries.
In his personal time, he has traveled widely in search of the world's birds and the wild places they inhabit. His adventures have taken him over 40 countries, traveling throughout Central and South America, across the Canadian Arctic, to Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Borneo, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Mongolia. From September 2014 to April 2015, Bill and his wife Connie took a seven-and-a-half-month around the world trip. They sighted more than 120 kinds of mammals and over 1,300 species of birds, including over a thousand lifers, and took more than 35,000 pictures.
Bill has been watching and studying birds for 50 years and in his travels has sighted nearly 4,400 species. To facilitate his studies, he is also a federally licensed master bird bander, with the Bird Banding Laboratory of the U.S. Geological Survey.
His work experience includes assisting the Russian Natural Resources Agency (formerly Goscomecologia, Buryatia) and the Russian Academy of Sciences to further protection of Lake Baikal, located in Siberia, Russia. From 1991 to 2004 he made 8 trips to the Republic of Buryatia to work on various projects to protect Lake Baikal and two trips to Mongolia to focus efforts on the Selenga River watershed, the largest river flowing into Lake Baikal. Since 2002, he has worked with ornithologists and environmental educators to develop a National Bird Conservation Education Plan for Nicaragua and establish a national strategy for protecting Nicaragua's threatened and endangered birds. He has made 18 trips to Nicaragua continues to support various bird conservation projects in the country and also leads birding tours to Nicaragua.
Bill and Connie make their home in the northern Kettle Moraine area of east-central Wisconsin. Here they work together to restore and manage a series of native plant communities on their land, including an oak-hickory forest, a planted prairie community and native plant nursery, and manage various types of wetlands. On this land, they have now identified more than 700 species of plants and animals, including 211 species of birds.
Bill shares his experiences and understanding of the natural world through lectures, presentations, field trips and the media. He has been a regular guest on Wisconsin Public Radio for more than 30 years with over 200 appearances as Wisconsin's bird expert. He is also working on several writing projects that will give these presentations more permanence and reach an even wider public.
All pictures taken by Bill and Connie