Jason Ward (naturalist)


Jason Ward is an American naturalist, birder, and activist. He is the host of the 2019 television documentary series Birds of North America. He is the founder and CEO of "The BlackAFinSTEM Collective".

Early life

Ward was born and raised in Bronx, New York. He has five siblings. He described seeing a peregrine falcon eating a pigeon when he was 14, which was one of the events that raised his interest in birds. He later moved to Atlanta and worked in a mortgage job. There he learned about the Atlanta Audubon Society, and starting joining their bird walks. Eight months later he started leading these bird walks. He also worked at Zoo Atlanta as an education instructor. He is now a community relations and outreach coordinator for the National Audubon Society.

Outreach work

Ward started a bird identification game on Twitter called #TrickyBirdID. He tweets out pictures of birds and participants have to guess what species it is. After the reveal he explains how to identify the bird.
Through this Twitter game he caught the attention of Anna Holmes, who worked as an editorial director for Topic.com. This led to the series Birds of North America, produced by Topic, of which the first episode was released on March 17, 2019. The show regularly features Ward's brother, Jeffrey, who is also a birder. The documentary series aims to reach people who might not normally engage in conservation efforts and learn about natural history—in particular young people, people of color, and people who live in cities. Ward also aims to share birding as a therapeutic activity for people living in cities.
In 2020 Ward was included in the Grist 50, as one of the "emerging leaders" to save the planet.
In May 2020, Ward and other naturalists and science communicators founded the BlackAFinSTEM collective and participated in Black Birders Week— a series of online events to celebrate black scientists, scholars, and naturalists.

Awards