NEW! Choose the  KEYNOTE SERIES  ticket for both and save $20!

Wildlife and Land Conservation

This keynote event includes a buffet meal, and will be held at the Firehouse Cultural Center in Ruskin.

Clay Henderson has had a long career as environmental lawyer, educator, and writer. He has served as president of Florida Audubon Society and Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. Until his retirement in 2019, he served as Executive Director of the Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience at Stetson University. He was elected to two terms on the Volusia County Council and served on the Florida Constitution Revision Commission. Henderson is most associated with wildlife and land conservation. He sponsored most of the environmental provisions in Florida's Constitution including the creation of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and co-authored the Florida Water and Land Legacy Initiative, the largest conservation funding program our nation’s history. He was also a leader in the development of Florida’s signature land acquisition programs including Preservation 2000, Florida Forever, and Florida Communities Trust, and negotiated the acquisition of over 300,000 acres of conservation lands. His book "Forces of Nature" (University Press of Florida) is an environmental history of Florida, and winner of the 2023 Stetson Kennedy Book Award. His newest book, "Audubon’s Birds of Florida," chronicles John James Audubon’s Florida expedition of 1831-32. Henderson has been recognized for his body of work including the national public service award from The Nature Conservancy, lifetime achievement awards from the Marine Resources Council, Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, and Bill Sadowski Memorial Award from the Environment and Land Use Section of the Florida Bar.

   6:00 - 8:00 pm
   $40 (festival registration not required)
   Link to Clay's Book
   Firehouse Cultural Center at 101 1st Ave NE, Ruskin, FL

Bird Planet - a Photography Journey

This keynote event includes a buffet dinner, and will be held at the Firehouse Cultural Center in Ruskin.

Birds inhabit every continent and major island and are conspicuous and loved by many. For ornithologist and National Geographic photographer Tim Laman, documenting these magnificent creatures has been a lifelong passion that has taken him from the Antarctic peninsula to the uninhabited Foja Mountains of New Guinea and more than one hundred other locations around the world. In his keynote, Tim will share his favorite bird photographs from over twenty-five years in the field, along with some of his most memorable adventures in pursuit of them. Covering a broad range of species from diverse habitats - from hornbills in the rainforest of Borneo to cranes in snowy Hokkaido, and from birds of paradise in the tree-tops of New Guinea to wandering albatross soaring over the Drake Passage, Tim's images of birds in their natural habitats are sure to inspire a greater appreciation for birds and the importance of protecting their environment, not just for the birds, but for all life on earth.

Tim Laman is a field biologist, wildlife photojournalist, and filmmaker. Since getting his Ph.D. from Harvard for pioneering research in Borneo’s rainforest canopy, his cameras have been his tools for telling the stories of rare and endangered wildlife and revealing some of earth’s wildest places. He has photographed on all seven continents, and regularly travels to some of the most remote corners of the earth to explore and document poorly known species. He is most well-known for his long-term work on birds-of-paradise and orangutans. He has published 24 feature stories in National Geographic magazine, as well as worked on natural history films for National Geographic, the BBC, and Netflix. Tim’s work has garnered numerous awards, including the overall prize Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2016, a 1st place Nature Story from World Press Photo, and the North American Nature Photography Association’s “Nature Photographer of the Year”. Tim is a fellow of the Explorer’s Club and of the International League of Conservation Photographers, as well as the co-founder of the Birds-of-Paradise Project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

   6:00 - 8:00 pm
   $40 (festival registration not required)
   Firehouse Cultural Center at 101 1st Ave NE, Ruskin, FL