2026 Bird Festival Keynote: Steve Hoffman

March 23, 2026

We’re thrilled to welcome Steve Hoffman as the keynote speaker for this year’s Wings Across the Big Sky birding festival!

June 12 – 14, 2026 | Kalispell, MT

Steve Hoffman has devoted his entire 45-year career to wildlife conservation. In 1986 he founded HawkWatch International; he has authored more than 50 publications and reports on raptor migration, ecology and conservation. In 2017, after 10 years as Executive Director of Montana Audubon, Steve started his own birding tour company, Merlin Birding & Nature Tours LLC. He resides in Bozeman, where he also coordinates the local Bridger Raptor Migration Project.

Join us for his talk, “45 Years of Counting Migrating Raptors in the West: What Have We Learned?” where he chronicles the efforts to develop an expansive raptor migration monitoring network in the western U.S. Over the last 49 years, these studies have yielded important scientific information about the health and population trends of more than a dozen raptor species that migrate through western North America.

To learn more about the festival and to register, click here: 2026 Wings Across the Big Sky Birding Festival