Q&A with Young Alumni Award Recipient Jon Van Arragon
Jon Van Arragon studied at Au Sable’s Pacific Rim Campus in 2018. He graduated from The Kings University in Alberta, Canada in 2021 with a major in Environmental Studies and now works as an assistant biologist at the Beaverhill Bird Observatory in Alberta. “His educational programming and presentations have reached over 30,000 students, fostering a deeper appreciation for God’s creation and the urgent need to protect it,” wrote Mike Ferber, his nominator. For his dedication to research and environmental education, he is one of the recipients of the 2025 Au Sable Young Alumni Award.
What did you take away from being at the Au Sable Institute?
Some of my main takeaways were practical skills like habitat assessment as it pertains to old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and species identification experience. Another important takeaway was knowing how amazing a community there is that exists in the environmental sciences. It is awesome to be around like-minded people in the field who also enjoy nature and maybe get a little too excited when a new species of bird lands in front of you. Everyone around me was interested in the same sorts of nature nerdery.
How did you get interested in birds?
I was always a nature kid, but my interest in birds really started when I came out to the Beaverhill Bird Observatory in 2015 when they were tagging owls. They did this audio call to attract them. Once they tagged them, they released them out into the night. It just sort of clicked: This is a job? I can do that? I bought my first pair of binoculars and bird field guides shortly after, and kept getting more and more into it.
You’ve been working at the Beaverhill Bird Observatory since before graduating college. What do you do now?
My first year on the job was when I really got into the bird banding. I actually got my bird banding license. You have to know details about 150 different species of birds that all live here.
But life has a strange way of guiding you into things you didn’t know you wanted to do.
Then I started not just doing fieldwork but also education. That wasn’t something I initially thought I really wanted to do. I was happy to be out in the cabin, in the forest, with minimal interaction with people. But life has a strange way of guiding you into things you didn’t know you wanted to do.
As it turns out, teaching other people about birds is something I really enjoy. I go into classrooms and bring a live bird of prey with me, whether a Great Horned Owl or a tiny Burrowing Owl. I see the kids’ faces absolutely light up. They think you’re the coolest person in the world because you’re holding a hawk on your hand.
What’s been most surprising in your research?
There are a lot of interesting things. The ways in which migration is different every year. It’s easy to think birds have dates circled on their calendars that say, “Migrate then.” But this year we’ve been getting a lot of different bird species at different times. Last year we didn’t see many Yellow-rumped Warblers. But this year, we do, perhaps because of population increases or different migratory routes. Those kinds of year-to-year differences really fascinate me.
Another interesting thing is that because of climate change, birds’ wingspans have increased. Over 30 years, based on analysis of data across dozens of research stations over thousands of birds, average wing spans are 1 millimeter longer. I think that’s to offset the fact that the air is a little warmer and less dense. Birds need a larger wing surface area to generate the same lift.
What does your day-to-day work look like?
In the field season, I do six hours of bird banding each morning. Because birds are most active right before sunrise, I get to be active too. This far north, my alarm is set for 3:30 am. I open up those nets and just wait. I check them every half hour for those six hours. I bring the birds back to the research station, give them a bracelet, and take information like age, sex, wing length, and body condition before releasing them.
Then I do all kinds of miscellaneous things—talk to visitors about birds, equipment upkeep, report writing, and data analysis. We’re a small little nonprofit so everyone gets to do a little bit of everything.
Is it hard to take the birds out of the nets for banding?
Birds have different personalities based on species. Warblers and sparrows are docile. Other birds make it their personal mission to exact righteous fury upon your fingers. Black-capped Chickadees are well-known as sweet, adorable, inquisitive birds. We call them pocket demons over here. They are ferocious.
What are the conservation challenges in your area?
We have an incredibly high abundance of aerial insectivores who catch bugs mid-air. Our populations of insects are plummeting, and so are our insectivores. The Least Flycatcher is a grey songbird with two little stripes on the wings. Our population is one of the most productive in North America, but we are documenting declines in breeding. One of the major challenges is bringing awareness of the importance of insectivores, and the plights they’re in.
How does your faith connect with your work?
On the one hand there’s the direct act of stewardship—creating habitat for these birds and keeping this place livable for all of our feathered and other animal friends. There is also the research being done to benefit the conservation of these species.
One of the most important callings we as Christians have is to serve and protect, but not only to serve as individuals. It’s to inspire a whole community of serving.
What is even more important is inspiring that same stewardship and conservation ethic in others. We’ve said here at the Beaverhill Bird Observatory that the research we do doesn’t save birds, but inspiring other people to serve, protect, and care does. Whether you’re doing that by talking about birds to people or showing someone a tiny, delicate, five-gram songbird in the hand, to me that’s the most important thing. One of the most important callings we as Christians have is to serve and protect, but not only to serve as individuals. It’s to inspire a whole community of serving.
What practices help you when facing environmental problems?
It’s definitely tough sometimes, when you spend hours looking at the data and looking at the graph where all the lines are going downward.
It’s easy to think that nothing I do is going to do anything. But remind yourselves that things can happen and they’re not going to happen unless you and other people care about creatures and care about the natural world.
I like to remind myself of the instances where the opposite happened. There have been some truly dire circumstances for species in the past. The Peregrine Falcon was just about extinct in Alberta back in the 1970s. There were two pairs left in the province. Through people coming together, working towards a common goal, and acting in a way that fosters care for these creatures, that species was brought back to thriving.
It’s easy to think that nothing I do is going to do anything. But remind yourselves that things can happen and they’re not going to happen unless you and other people care about creatures and care about the natural world.
