Guest Speaker: Jeff Antonelis-Lapp
To most birders, Mount Rainier National Park is a mecca for subalpine and alpine birds that include Gray Jay, Clark’s Nutcracker, Mountain Bluebird, and many other species. It’s also home to highly sought-after specialties that include Boreal Owl, White-tailed Ptarmigan, and Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch. But did you know that it and its neighboring watersheds host Northern Spotted Owl, Marbled Murrelet, and Streaked Horned Lark, all protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act? Join Jeff Antonelis-Lapp, Emeritus Faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, as he shares the status of these key species from Tahoma and Its People, his natural history of Mount Rainier National Park book, published this spring by Washington State University Press. Learn more at https://jeffantonelis-lapp.com/.
After graduating from college, Jeff Antonelis-Lapp worked two summers at Mount Rainier National Park, igniting a connection to the mountain that endures today. He has summited the mountain, hiked all of its mapped trails, and completed the 93-mile Wonderland Trail five times.
Jeff began writing Tahoma and Its People after being unable to find a current natural history for a course he planned to teach at The Evergreen State College. He conducted over 250 days of fieldwork for the book, many of them in the company of park archaeologists, biologists, and geologists.
While at Evergreen, he taught Native American Studies, natural history, environmental education, and served as the Library Dean before retiring in 2015.