Greg Butcher

 

 

Greg Butcher is the Migratory Species Coordinator with the U.S. Forest Service International Programs, working with birds, bats, and monarch butterflies. The Migratory Species Program focuses on promoting conservation south of the U.S. border to supplement Forest Service conservation efforts in the U.S. Projects are primarily in the Western Hemisphere and include grassland and forest bird, shorebird, and waterbird research and conservation. Greg is a longtime member of the SJV Management Board, providing many years of guidance and knowledge to the SJV. He is also a member of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network, and Partners in Flight’s landbird conservation program.

There are several national forests within the SJV’s U.S. boundary and many of the breeding birds in those forests winter in the Mexican portion of the SJV. Thus, the SJV helps the Forest Service plan for full-annual-cycle conservation for species for which the Forest Service has conservation responsibility. Greg has participated in the development of the Tropical Dry Forest Bird Conservation Business planning process of Partners in Flight, which is based in large part on the SJV’s conservation planning.

The SJV region encompasses some of the most beautiful areas on the planet, from La Paz and Mazatlán in the south, to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the Sky Islands of southeastern Arizona in the north. Greg says that he “will never forget my literary introduction to the area through The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts.”