VCE’s Jason Hill Receives High Honor as AOS Elective Member

Jason Hill holding an Eastern Meadowlark that he outfitted with an archival GPS tag, Konza Prairie, Kansas. April 2016. Photo courtesy of Clay Graham.

VCE is delighted and proud to announce that our very own Jason Hill has received high recognition as an Elective Member of the American Ornithological Society (AOS). Dedicated to “advancing scientific knowledge and conservation of birds”, the AOS is North America’s preeminent avian conservation science society. At its June annual meeting in Anchorage, AK, the AOS officially welcomed Jason as one of the newly-elected class of Elective Members, who “…are nominated based on their significant contributions to ornithology and/or service to AOS.”

Jason’s outstanding accomplishments in ornithology and conservation, both since joining VCE in 2015 and well before that, almost certainly qualified him as a “shoo-in” for AOS Elective Member status. A lifelong naturalist and birder, with a very strong skillset in quantitative ecology and a PhD in Ecology from Pennsylvania State University, Jason’s pre-VCE career spanned ornithological (and other) work from tracking endangered Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers in Florida, to researching House Wrens in Costa Rica, (unsuccessfully) averting extinction of the Po’ouli honeycreeper in Maui, investigating post-fledgling ecology of Saltmarsh Sparrows in Connecticut, and studying the population ecology of grassland sparrows following experimental landscape manipulation in Pennsylvania. At VCE, Jason has pioneered migration tracking studies of Grasshopper Sparrows, Eastern Meadowlarks and Upland Sandpipers, while leading our Mountains program, overseeing Mountain Birdwatch, coordinating our immensely popular Suds & Science discussion series, mentoring our annual summer interns, and cranking out R code on demand for his VCE colleagues. His resume includes more than a dozen peer-reviewed publications.

It is entirely fitting that Jason received this well-deserved honor from AOS, joining VCE colleagues Kent McFarland, Roz Renfrew, John Lloyd, and Chris Rimmer. We extend our hearty congratulations to Jason and look forward to his many remarkable accomplishments ahead!

Jason Hill with a banded male Bobolink, as part of his efforts to establish an annual grassland bird monitoring program for the Burr and Burton Academy. Manchester, Vermont. May 2017. Photo courtesy of Jaidon Lalor.