Maggie Figura

Maggie Figura joined Audubon as the Range Ecologist for western South Dakota in 2024. In this role, she facilitates Audubon’s Conservation Ranching Initiative and Prairie Management Toolbox programs to leverage technical and financial assistance supporting producers who want to practice bird-friendly land management or contribute to climate resilience.  

Originally from Bozeman, she completed her Bachelor’s at Montana State University in Organismal Biology with a focus on Ornithology. During this time, she also had the privilege of performing her own independent research, performing avian surveys throughout northern Idaho and western Montana including on the endangered Lewis’s Woodpecker, and providing a point of contact between private landowners and researchers. Following her passion for avian conservation, she came to SDSU in 2019 to pursue a Master’s in Wildlife Science and there first joined the intersection of birds, conservation, and agriculture.  While there, she performed research commissioned by the NRCS investigating impacts of cover crop implementation on bird communities and developing management recommendations for producers. Following earning her degree and before joining Audubon, Maggie coordinated and implemented avian IMBCR surveys throughout both the public and private lands of the Northern Great Plains for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, there also serving as the facilitator between implementers and producers. 

I am driven by no more than a life-long and bone-deep passion for wildlife and conservation, especially when it comes to birds. And our grassland birds are experiencing the most extreme, consistent, and widespread decline of any bird group, with 53% of North American grassland birds lost in barely the last 50 years alone. Ranchers are one of our most crucial resources for conserving these imperiled species and their habitat, and so I strive only to provide a valuable resource to our ranchers in return.