Jon Hayes is the Executive Director of Audubon Southwest where he oversees the staff and conservation work in New Mexico and Arizona, focused on conserving our water resources, protecting and restoring the habitats birds need, confronting the climate crisis, and educating the next generation of scientists and conservationists.
Prior to joining Audubon, Hayes served with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative where he was responsible for guiding multi-organizational development and implementation of applied research projects. In this capacity, he coordinated landscape-level cooperative projects in a six-state region among federal agencies, state wildlife agencies, and multiple non-profit organizations focused on improving conservation effectiveness in western grassland and riparian ecosystems. Additionally, he has served with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture, working at a programmatic level to implement regional conservation efforts aimed at restoring declining grassland bird populations. Jon holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Population and Organismic Biology from the University of Colorado and a Master’s of Science in Natural Resource Conservation from the University of Montana.
Jon feels strongly about the work being advanced by Joint Ventures across the country and believes the Sonoran Joint Venture’s binational efforts to advance bird science, on-the-ground conservation, and collaboration between partners is essential to achieving landscape scale conservation of priority bird species. As a former upland gamebird biologist, Jon is particularly interested in conserving viable populations of the four quail species found in this region; Masked Bobwhite, Scaled Quail, Montezuma Quail, and Gambel’s Quail.