Hope is the Thing with Feathers: How bird watchers and AI are reshaping how we see and conserve birds
Dr. Miyoko Chu, Senior Director of Communications at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Tuesday, November 5 at 4pm
Linderman Library Room 200, Scheler Humanities Forum
For millennia, birds have captured people’s imaginations with their beauty, songs,
and soaring flights. Now, with our planet facing a biodiversity crisis, birds are in
trouble worldwide. In the U.S. and Canada, nearly 3 billion breeding birds have
been lost in the past 50 years, and half of bird species are declining. Take a look at
the future of bird conservation as Dr. Miyoko Chu shares how digital information
platforms, AI technology, and growing numbers of bird enthusiasts are generating
unprecedented data and insights about 11,000 bird species around the
world—with the hope saving them while there is still time.
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Dr. Miyoko Chu is the senior director of Communications at the Cornell Lab of
Ornithology, a nonprofit organization that engages people of all walks of life in
understanding and protecting birds and nature. An ornithologist and science
writer, Dr. Chu led the team that created the Cornell Lab’s free Merlin Bird ID app
which has been downloaded by more than 10 million people around the world.
She is the author of Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory
Birds; Birdscapes, a Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound; and
America’s Favorite Birds: 40 Beautiful Birds to Color.