This Raptor Biologist Works to Conserve Wildlife Using Modern Day Dinosaurs

Kristine Kirkby is a wildlife conservationist and raptor biologist—someone who has studied and works with birds of prey—and a wildlife management technician. On the falconry team at Vancouver International Airport, Kristine works with trained peregrine falcons, hawks, and an eagle. Together, they work to naturally deter shorebirds, ducks, and snow geese from the air field to keep flight operations safe. In an amazing collaboration between human and bird, this crack team also traps and relocates wild raptors that take up residence on the air field, manages the ones that come back to stay, and recruits them to help in wildlife management.

Discovering her passion for raptors when she studied wildlife biology at the University of Guelph, Kristine has also studied ornithology and herpetology, and travels out of her comfort zone and into the jungles of Puerto Rico to study hawks when she is not working with trained raptors at YVR. Through her work, Kristine sustains her passion for wildlife, and continues the legacy of working in partnership with wildlife to protect it.

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