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Audubon Minnesota has a number of volunteer opportunities available throughout the year. Hardworking members of the community help to keep Audubon Minnesota running smoothly. Volunteers do a wide variety of work ranging from working in the Audubon Booth at the State Fair, helping with our annual birdseed sale, office administration, or helping us to make our special events a success. Volunteer opportunities change on a regular basis so please call us if you would like to know what we need your help with today!

At the Fall Members Meeting on November 11, three awards were given out to four incredibly dedicated and committed Audubon activists. Lifetime Achievement Awards recognize members who have outshined their peers in the length of time and level of commitment through their volunteer work at Audubon.

Patricia and John Telfer have been very active and effective members of the Minnesota River Valley Audubon Chapter (MRVAC) since its inception. Pat helped with the chapters care and feeding in many tangible ways. As a professional artist, she donated her beautiful watercolors of birds for chapter auctions. As an excellent cook, she brought food and goodies to meetings and chapter gatherings. Pat was the chapter’s Publicity Chair for 20 years. Jack helped with the care of the chapter too. He is an artist as well, most often in woodwork, and donated to the chapter wooden teddy bears, reindeers, bowls, medallions and ceramics. He served as MRVAC’s vice president and at various time chair of the Nominating Committee, Conservation Committee, and Communication Committee, wrote articles for the chapter newsletter helped to mail out notices – something he is still doing. Together, they have been actively involved with every battle the chapter has taken on from local initiatives to federal issues: Save the Bald Eagle Project (1974), Garrison Dam, and really spearheaded saving Highland Park form a proposed 4-lane highway in the 1970s. They promoted recycling to the public before it was really thought much about. Jack was the original chair for the Armchair Activist program and is still involved with it. Today they are still active on the chapter’s Natural Resources Committee which they’ve been involved with since its beginning, spearheading the MN River Valley Birding Trail Guide, coming to our annual Lobby Day at the state capitol and taking on national issues such as ANWR. Favorite bird: Jack – black capped chickadee; Pat – Northern Cardinal.

Bill Bruins has been an Audubon member since the 1960s from his perch in Rochester. He has been active in the Zumbro Valley Audubon Society serving as its newsletter editor for 11 years, as conservation chair, seed sale coordinator and board member. He has participated in the Christmas Bird Count for 20 years and has served on a number of local conservation task forces, councils and committees, and as a volunteer conducting bird surveys and prairie restoration projects. On the state level, Bill has been a board member of Audubon Minnesota since 1996 and has served as vice-chair and chair of the Board. He is faithful in his service to our Environmental Issues Committee since the mid-1980s, and is our representative on the Board of the Minnesota Environmental Fund. Bill’s interest in birding began in college when a friend took him on a weekend outing in Illinois to look for owls and watch the spring hawk migration. Favorite bird: Louisiana waterthrush.

Mary Ellen Vetter studied early childhood education in college and is now a retired second grade teacher. She became interested in conservation during our nation’s first Earth Day in 1970 and served as Brooklyn Center’s Conservation Commission as chairperson for 10 years beginning programs in recycling, open space preservation, sign ordinances, and energy conservation. When the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis established a conservation committee, she got involved. She then went on to become a vice- president of the chapter and then its president. She has spearheaded just about every chapter committee or task except for the newsletter, and particularly enjoyed being chair of the Education Committee. She is now in her third, 3-year term on the Board of the Audubon Center of the North Woods. She became interested in birds from backyard birding and seeing an avocet wading in the Missouri River which she found so beautiful and extraordinary. Her favorite bird: American avocet.