Merida English Library lecture series: Barbara MacKinnon de Montes

The MEL weekly lecture series continues 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 24, with Barbara MacKinnon de Montes.

MacKinnon has been studying and conserving the birds of the Yucatán Peninsula for the past 42 years.

She has lived in Mexico since 1969, principally on the Yucatan Peninsula and was naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 1981. She is the Founding President of the conservation organization, Amigos de Sian Ka’an A.C., Cancún, Quintana Roo.

MacKinnon is known for her years of training bird guides in the región about which she shared her experiences on the subject in a manual available free in English and Spanish on the internet and is being used throughout the world.

She was the coordinator of the Yucatan Bird Festival – Toh – during its first four years and continues to document avian distribution on the península. In addition, she is the regional reviewer for e-bird; and is the author of over sixty publications on birds and their conservation. She continues to give conferences and participate in regional and national bird conservation initiatives.

In 2006 she was awarded Mexico’s National Prize for Ecological Merit in the individual category, given by that nation’s Secretariat for the Environment and Natural Resources, on behalf of her numerous contributions to natural resource conservation throughout the Yucatán Peninsula, and since then has received numerous other regional awards.

Since 2015 she supervises the program Sal a Pajarear which trains volunteers in rural communities to teach the local children to conserve birds and their hábitat. She is the author of the regional bird guide published in Spanish, Sal a Pajarear Yucatán.

Free and open to the public, donations encouraged.