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In her new book “Birding to Change the World,” Trish O’Kane, Senior Lecturer in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at University of Vermont (�պ�����), delves into her journey from accidental ornithologist to community organizer and professor. With birds at the center, it weaves together stories of science and social change. 

Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben says it is “not just a delightful story but a powerful one, showing how we can open doors into the natural world, and hence into the fight to defend it.”

found that approximately 96 million people over the age of 16 engage in birdwatching. This number has more than doubled in the five years since the previous survey was conducted. O’Kane’s work is expanding the growing community of birdwatchers even further by sharing the benefits of birding with students at an early age.

O’Kane will celebrate the launch of her book on its release date, February 27, 2024, .

How would you describe your book?

The book begins with the lowest moment of my life after Hurricane Katrina destroyed my home in New Orleans, Louisiana. It hit me that this would be our future if we didn't dramatically change course. I started reading about climate change immediately, I was an environmental zero, but I was also an investigative journalist, so I knew how to do research. Once I started that process, I couldn’t ignore the big picture of what we’d be leaving for future generations to shoulder.

In my depressed state, and with everything in the city shut down, I started to slow down and pay attention to my surroundings. I began watching birds, and simply put, they saved my soul. From there I went on to pursue a PhD, I found myself in an unexpected battle for wetland conservation, and I became a professor mentoring college and middle school students with the help of birds.

It's a story about how to pick yourself up with the help of some beautiful creatures and how following an unexpected path brought me hope that we can change the world.

What led to combining higher education, middle school mentorship, and birding?

It was an interesting series of events. When I moved to Madison Wisconsin to get my PhD, I coincidentally moved across the street from a large wetland park that was seriously threatened by urban development. I started birding in this park and over time I counted 141 bird species, over half of which were long-distance migrants to Latin America. It was an amazing source of biodiversity in the city, but there were plans to destroy it. So, my husband and I organized with our neighbors to stop the development. In the process, I began attending public hearings and learning more about my neighborhood. It was a lower-income neighborhood made up of a lot of families with young children.

I talked with a City Councilor about the park, she agreed that it was a great asset but said that people weren’t using it. There were no programs to get kids in the park.

So, I thought ‘I can create a kid’s program.’ My first idea was to get first and second-graders out into nature. I thought ‘I’ll teach them all about birds, and they’ll be thrilled.’ But a meeting with the local middle school Principal changed that vision.

He needed help creating programs for his students and with the park just one mile from school grounds not only would they get outside, but the walk would incorporate exercise. I agreed and created the “Birding to Change the World” course. The idea was to have college students partner with middle schoolers and engage in learning about birds together. The first semester, just five middle school students showed up for my class of 13 college students.

How did the course evolve from those first five middle school students?

I made a lot of mistakes at first. I thought I could teach them 500-level veterinary biology and then take them outside and make them sit silently for 20 minutes. As you might imagine that was a complete failure. It took me about three months to realize that the core of the course needed to be fostering a mentorship relationship between college students and middle school students.

Once that clicked it took off. It started doubling in size every semester and within four years, we had over 50 middle school kids enrolled, over half of which were Latinx. It was the most popular and affordable club in Madison. I couldn't keep up with the demand and today it is still a successful program.

What does that mentorship relationship look like and what do the students get out of it?

It doesn’t look anything like what I initially imagined. I thought it would be a calm, focused birding club. Well, it’s not that. It looks like chaos. And it's beautiful. Each week I see the kids transform, many of them are very shy and have never spoken up in their classes, and after a few weeks I hear stories of them raising their hands in class to share about the bird they saw.

I see my college students change too. It forces them to recognize what they can and can’t control in a work setting, and it makes them attend to and focus on something outside of themselves. They also have an elevated sense of responsibility – they need to show up for their students. Every year they rise to the occasion and become leaders.

Rubenstein School undergraduate Carina Crane ’24 is an Environmental Studies major and a student in the Place-based Education (PBE) Certificate program. Crane found her niche when she discovered the PBE program and O’Kane’s course allowed her to put her learning into practice. 

"It’s an amazing course because you have an opportunity to know fellow �պ����� students and people in the Burlington community on a much deeper level. The relationship our class built with the fourth- and fifth-grade students was really special. It also allows the students to just be kids outside. They get to be at home in their imagination and creativity in ways they may not be able to in the classroom.

I was paired with a fifth-grade student who hadn’t had much experience in outdoor spaces and wasn’t super comfortable at first. By the end of the course, we would just sit together outside and watch the trees swaying. It was awesome to see her get more comfortable and familiar with the environment.

I think it’s amazing that Trish has established this program in a public-school setting. She puts so much emphasis on environmental and social justice and makes sure the value of public access to outdoor spaces is prioritized."

O’Kane made the importance of relationship-building clear. As our conversation continued, I asked her “How crucial are the birds?”

It could in theory be adapted to focus on frogs or trees or any creature found in nature. But I do think there’s something different about birds. For one thing, they are everywhere in all seasons. A kid in New York City may have a hard time finding a pond or stream to look at aquatic life, but they can see or hear birds without having to drive anywhere.

Birds are also special in that they sing, they live in different countries and cultures at different times of the year, and so there's so much that you can teach through birds.

They are magical – in a week or two I’ll take my current class owling. When they see their first owl, I know they will remember it forever.

The title of the course and now of your book is “Birding to Change the World.” It’s a bold concept. What does that mean to you?

I believe in this concept because it’s true for me – birding has changed my life and my world. It forces me to slow down and when you slow down, you start to notice things you didn't notice before. You connect to your surroundings differently. For my students, this might mean they don't just notice the birds, they also notice social injustices relating to accessibility and availability of natural spaces.

I believe birding is an answer to our current national mental health crisis, especially among young people. Studies show that well-being increases with the more time you spend outside in green spaces. When you go birding, you are automatically expecting to see something amazing, maybe even something you've never seen before, so it puts your mind in an optimistic state.

Birding also provides a lens on racism and marginalization. The way many people in modern Western society think about birding stems from elite English aristocratic traditions steeped in colonialism, sexism, and racism. By digging into the history of birding, and diverse ways of knowing, such as indigenous ecological knowledge, the realities of historical oppression become more tangible.

Lastly, I’ve seen how birds can be a bridge in these times when we are so culturally and politically divided. It has introduced me to people I would never have met or befriended otherwise. One of my most important teachers is an avid hunter and when I met him, I was a flailing vegetarian. I didn’t think we’d have anything in common, but he’d been fighting for 50 years to protect wetlands, and I was trying to do the same thing in Madison, WI.

More than a third of the United States population engages in birdwatching. It is the most popular wildlife-viewing activity in the country. That is hugely unifying. Imagine if 4 million or even 1 million people started working for change in the interest of birds, with a shared language of birding, that could be a big movement.

. Signed copies of the book will be available at the event.