2025 Special Emphasis Series

David Sibley, son of ornithologist Fred Sibley, began seriously watching and drawing birds in 1969, at age seven. Since 1980, David has traveled throughout North America in search of birds, both on his own and as a leader of birdwatching tours. This intensive travel and bird study culminated in the publication of his comprehensive guide to bird identification, The Sibley Guide to Birds, in 2000 and the completely updated second edition in 2014. Other books include a companion volume The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior in 2001; Sibley's Birding Basics – an introduction to bird identification – in 2002; and the Sibley Field Guides to Eastern and Western birds second edition in 2016. In 2009 he completed a fully illustrated guide to the identification of North American Trees – The Sibley Guide to Trees. His newest book - What It's Like to be a Bird - was published in 2020.

He is the recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Award for lifetime achievement from the American Birding Association and the Linnaean Society of New York’s Eisenmann Medal. David lives in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he continues to study and draw birds and trees.

Dr. Patrick Druckenmiller is Professor of Geology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. His research focuses on dinosaurs and Mesozoic marine reptiles, particularly those from high latitudes. He leads numerous field-based paleontology projects across Alaska, from Southeast to the North Slope. Pat has conducted research on Denali dinosaurs since 2015. In 2018 he became museum director. In that role he oversees the state’s largest teaching and research museum that houses 2.5 million objects focusing on the cultural and natural history of the North and welcomes up to 90,000 visitors annually.

Mike and Molly are the co-founders, Su Salmon Co. and live 5 miles north of “the end of the road” in Talkeetna. They built their off-grid home by hand on the banks of the Susitna River. They log the trees for heat and building materials, drink the water, eat the moose, and garden the glacial soils, that are supported by the mighty Big Su.

At the heart of their life is a river that connects it all. The Susitna River drains Denali, the southern slopes of the Alaska Range, and the Talkeetna Mountains. Its legendary Devils Canyon is home to some of the biggest whitewater in the world. It is a travel corridor in winter and summer by local remote homesteaders, boaters, rafters, snow-machiners, skiers, and Iditarod mushers. The river's marshy estuary is world-class waterfowl habitat and the uplands support moose, bear and caribou; many of which still provide sustenance to thousands of people, just as it has to the river's first residents, the Dena'ina and Ahtna, for millennia. Its streams, lakes and wetlands support one of the largest Salmon runs in the state. It is a constant source of amazement and bounty.

Every July, Molly and Mike boat downriver to their fish camp, where they operate a small, remote, commercial salmon set-net operation with their Partner Ryan Petersen and close friends. They supply fresh, sustainably harvested salmon to local customers, including Camp Denali. Summer is a special time of year, when many Alaskans migrate along with the salmon runs and thrive off hard work and the challenges that come from harvesting off the land and sea.

AlexAnna Salmon is President of the Igiugig Village Council. She is of Yup’ik and Aleut descent and was raised in the village of Igiugig, Alaska.

In 2008, AlexAnna graduated from Dartmouth College with a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in Native American Studies and Anthropology. After graduating, she returned to work for the Igiugig Tribal Village Council where she was elected President and, until 2016, also held the role of Administrator. AlexAnna serves as a member of the Igiugig Native Corporation board, which is responsible for the stewardship of 66,000 tribal acres. She also serves on the Nilavena Tribal Health Consortium and is a member of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s Advisory Board. She received her Master’s Degree in Rural Development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2021.

In her work as President of the Igiugig Village Council, AlexAnna has been a driving force behind the community’s efforts to generate its own energy from renewable sources. In 2015, she was invited to President Obama’s roundtable discussion with Alaska Native leaders and was praised by Sen. Dan Sullivan in 2017 on the Senate floor for helping strengthen her community and making it an incredible place to live. AlexAnna loves raising her kids in the subsistence way of life, revitalizing Indigenous languages, and traveling.

Nathaniel Herz is an independent journalist based in Anchorage, Alaska, where he publishes the Northern Journal news website, newsletter and podcast.

Nat graduated from Bowdoin College and spent two years covering Olympic level cross-country skiing and biathlon before receiving his graduate degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After moving to Alaska in 2013, he spent nearly six years reporting on government and politics for the Anchorage Daily News and four years covering climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic for Anchorage’s NPR affiliate station before founding Northern Journal in 2022.

Nat now focuses his work on Alaska’s natural resources — namely its fisheries and its oil, gas, renewable energy and mining industries. His work has taken him from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands to Southeast Alaska fishing towns. He spends a few weeks every summer harvesting salmon at a small commercial setnet site in Cook Inlet, near Anchorage, which supplies Camp Denali with some of its fish.

Julie Collins and her twin sister Miki have spent their lives in the Alaskan bush, 40 miles west of Camp Denali, just beyond the boundary of Denali National Park in the roadless community of Lake Minchumina. Living off-grid and as self-sufficiently as possible, they follow a seasonal subsistence lifestyle – cutting firewood, hunting moose, trapping furs, netting fish for their dog team, and preserving vegetables from their garden and berries from the land. 

Miki and Julie enjoy a mutually close relationship with Denali National Park staff, from participating in climate-change observations and other studies to trading sled-dog puppies with the Park’s sled dog kennel. The Collins’ have chronicled their lives in newspapers, magazines and books, including Riding the Wild Side of Denali and Trapline Twins.

Ramey Newell is an American-Canadian filmmaker, photographer, and multidisciplinary artist who splits her time between British Columbia and Oregon. Her moving image work has been screened at film festivals and in galleries, museums and other art spaces throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia, including: the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Alchemy Moving Image Festival in Hawick, Scotland; Mountainfilm in Telluride, Colorado; Antimatter in Victoria, Canada; and many others. Ramey’s experimental and documentary films have also earned accolades such as the Jury’s Stellar Award (Grand Prize) at Black Maria Film Festival (2018), Best Director at Mirror Mountain Film Festival (2017), Jury Award at Imagine Science Film Festival’s Symbiosis competition, (2022), and Audience Award for Best Documentary at Eastern Sierra Mountain Film Festival (2024). Her photographic work has been exhibited at venues such as The Polygon Gallery in Vancouver, Gallery 44 in Toronto, and the New York Hall of Science in Queens, NY.

Ramey holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from New Mexico State University, and she later attained a Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Practices and a Certificate in College Teaching from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Art at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She has taught filmmaking at University of British Columbia Okanagan and at University of Oregon.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Ramey gained an early appreciation for open spaces, forests, and mountains that has persisted throughout her adult life and permeates much of her creative work. When she’s not making art or teaching, she enjoys hiking in deserts and high country, rock climbing, playing tennis, gardening, and traveling with her partner and their spotty dog.

Ben wrote two books about the human consequences of environmental catastrophe in Africa: Radio Congo about the people living in the wreck-age of Eastern Congo’s resource wars and City of Thorns – about people fleeing famine and climate-driven war in the Horn of Africa. After moving to Wales and beginning to research the coming impacts of climate change closer to home, his attention turned to the Arctic Circle and the boreal forest. What he discovered led to his third book: The Treeline and to a dawning realization that we needed to prepare – and soon – for major changes to our ways of life. And to do that, we need new institutions that promote new ways of thinking and learning, new ways of seeing ourselves and new ways of interacting with the non-human world. Black Mountains College is committed to that task.

Ned Rozell has twice — 20 years apart — walked across Alaska on a gravel road that parallels the trans-Alaska pipeline. In between those 800-mile walks, he has written a few thousand stories on Alaska science and natural history in his job for the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

Born in upstate New York where he lived for the first 18 years of his life, Rozell migrated north as a radio repairman for the U.S. Air Force in the 1980s. Now, he has lived in Alaska for more than half his life. He has seen a good spread of the state, a lot of it with scientists who have allowed him to tag along and write about their research.

An award-winning documentary-adventure photographer, filmmaker, and conservationist, Navy Veteran Chad Brown is the founder/president of non-profits Soul River, Inc. and Love is King. In addition, Chad’s latest efforts include outdoor adventure travel, threatened wild spaces, and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities. Through his projects, he connects the public to endangered lands, capturing the true essence of their peoples in moments of passion and the indomitable human spirit. Utilizing striking documentary portraits, photographic exhibitions and film, Chad also advocates for social and environmental justice.

Chad’s pathway began as a conventional one, but took on a number of unexpected twists and turns. He studied communication and photography at American Intercontinental University, then moved onto the Pratt Institute in NYC earning his Master’s Degree in Communication Design. He went on to manage interdisciplinary teams in multiple agencies, serving in various roles including creative/art director and photographer, as well as a freelance artist and editorial photographer for the New York Times. His efforts crossed into the world of hip-hop fashion and culture, where he worked with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons of PhatFarm and Rasheed Young of Run Athletics, photographing and developing creative campaigns for national hip-hop culture magazines.

Ronn and Marketa are a husband and wife team, both in life and in business. They share a passion for many things, including photography, Northern Lights, nature, travel, their wonderful dogs. Ronn fell in love with photography in 2007 while working over the summer in California
to pay his way through college. Later that year, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska, to follow his dream of becoming a professional photographer. It was then that he captured his first image of the Northern Lights and became entranced by their magic spell.

In January 2008, he began working for a national school portrait studio and learned the ins and outs of studio portraiture. Later that summer, he moved to Fairbanks to manage their regional office. Being in the heart of Alaska put him in an excellent location for Aurora. The following January he launched his own small portrait and wedding studio. Being able to set his schedule allowed him the freedom to be out late, enjoying and photographing the Northern Lights.

Marketa was born and raised in the Czech Republic. In 2002, she moved to Iceland and went on to manage TGI Fridays for several years. During that time she fell in love with the night sky, the Aurora, the beautiful Icelandic landscapes and photography. She found that venturing out into the calm, cold, dark nights to photograph the Northern Lights was an excellent escape from the hustle and bustle of the busy restaurant.

In 2011, she ventured to Alaska, where the two met and fell in love chasing the Aurora together. They were married a year later, beneath the majestic Aurora Borealis and have been “chasing the lights” together, ever since."

Bathsheba Demuth is a writer and environmental historian specializing in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her work addresses how ecologies and people change each other over time, paying particular attention to our relationship with animals, the role of ideas and law in shaping how we relate to the world, and Indigenous modes of science and history. Her interest in the north started when she was eighteen and moved to the Gwich'in village of Old Crow, in the Yukon, where she trained sled dogs for several years. Her first book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, won multiple awards and was named a best book by NPR, Nature, and other publications. Currently she is writing a biography of the Yukon River watershed from the beginning of colonization to the era of climate change, and has spent the last several years traveling the river by boat and dog team, and in archives around the world.

Bathsheba's writing has appeared in publications from The New Yorker and Granta to The Best American Science and Nature Writing, as well as academic venues. She teaches creative writing alongside history and environmental studies classes, as well as a field-based course where students canoe 150 miles of the Yukon River through the University of Alaska Fairbanks Climate Scholars Program. When not in the north, she lives in Providence Rhode Island, where she is the Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University.

Colorado-based photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins was the founder and director of the Expedition Photography program for the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic alliance. For more than 30 years he has traveled the world leading photo expeditions from the Arctic to Antarctica and points in between. Back on land he taught workshops and seminars with the National Geographic Traveler magazine, National Geographic Expeditions, Canon USA, Arizona Highways, and Santa Fe Workshops.